One Flash of Light
by Thessaly
Summary: New Bohos, Gazz and Scara fight, the Bohemians have a concert, Meat and Khashoggi evade each other, and everyone's faith is severely tested. Tension and romance and angst, oh my.  What's not to love? Rating for language.
1. Chapter 1

**(A/N)**_ "Stateside" or "the States" refers to all of the current US and Canada merged into one; individual states are referred to as regions. This makes sense, I promise! Moxy Fruvous is a Canadian band. They're wonderful. As to why Gazz and Scara set up shop in Liberty's? No idea, no justification, except that I would rather like to live in Liberty's. I know this isn't a particularly creative start-out, and I'm fairly sure that there are a lot of people who have covered parts of this premise, but I just had to write my own. So I'm not stealing anybody's ideas, I promise. _

"I gather that they used to call it Liberty's," said Commander Khashoggi to the young man beside him.

He was a neat, compact man, his feathery, shoulder-length hair dyed green. He blinked, and looked at the huge building in front of them with its half timbers over white stucco and large front windows. "My goodness. Why?"

The Commander appeared slightly nettled. "I have no idea."

The younger man laughed. "OK. I suppose we'd better go crash this party, eh?"

Khashoggi pulled the dark wooded doors open and displayed the sparkle and laughter that characterized the Dreamer's parties. "After you."

They found their host in the central atrium, drinking something brightly coloured and arguing with his barman. Khashoggi cleared his throat. Pop gestured. Galileo turned around with more force than necessary and jogged his drink, sending it out in a splash of violent purple over his shirt and the visitor's. He was a tall young man with a self-deprecating face and dark hair that needed cutting, who, at times, carried an air of awkward self-consciuosness. "Wow, I'm sorry!" he fumbled on the bar for napkins and held them out to the other man, who took them and wiped ineffectually at the purple splatters on his shirt.

"It's all right," the newcomer said, with a half-shrug. "Really." He put the napkin down and held out one hand. "Galileo Figaro, I presume?"

"Um, yes." Galileo put the remains of his drink down and licked purple drops off his hand before shaking the other man's quickly. "Sorry, should I know you?"

"This is Moxy Fruvous," said the Commander. "He's just arrived from Stateside; I asked him to join us."

"I don't follow you," said Galileo, wiping purple off his other hand. "And now that you mention it, what _are_ you on about anyway?"

"_Security_, Gazz," said a new voice. A short, dark-haired young woman leaned around the lanky Dreamer to offer her hand to the Commander and the newcomer. "For the _concert_. You know, the one we're doing tomorrow night." She gave Fruvous a small, quick smile. "Unless it's got four beats and the remotest possibility of a vocal line, he's kind of a dead loss. I'm Scaramouche, and I guess you're that bloke this one keeps going on about. Where did you say you were from?"

"Stateside," said Moxy Fruvous. "Ontario region. Yes, I'm here about security. I'll need briefing for the situation here. Um," he pushed green hair back from his face with quick fingers and glanced at the impassive Commander. "Did you want to do this now?"

Khashoggi looked around. "We've got half of the band; that should do it." Khashoggi escorted them into one of the smaller second-floor rooms, watching the crowds. He was still and quiet even for him, but he carried a subdued tension with him. He shut the door behind him and remained standing in front of it, scrutinizing the other three.

"Right," said Galileo, snagging a chair with his ankle and dropping into it. "What's this about security?"

Scara hitched herself onto the table. "Gazz, pay attention. You're the Dreamer. You destroyed the Planet Mall network. Don't you think people are going to be a little annoyed?"

"What people?"

"You know. The, uh - " She looked at Khashoggi and his new security officer, "I dunno, Yes-Things. And some of the Gaga kids. All the important people. That lot, yeah?" Khashoggi nodded.

Moxy linked his fingers together and then looked up at the Dreamer and his Bad-Arse Babe. "You're exactly right, Scaramouche," he said quietly. Under the brighter lights in this room, he looked very tired. "You destroyed the network – what? – almost a year ago, I think. We've all had a hell of a time with reconstruction." He looked around the room. "You people have done a great job. And the Aussies. Us, not so much. Anyway. Most of the High-Ups left here when KQ did. There's some people like me and Andrei who switched and are working out kinks in the new order, but there's definitely a bunch of Yes-Things and High-Ups out there. A lot of them escaped to Stateside Brazil region, I think." He shrugged. "That's what I hear, anyway. And there are some in the more conservative regions south of us. Indiana, Texas, Kansas. There's so much space it's hard to tell. But there are people out there who hold, um, a serious grudge against you two and your friends."

Scara swallowed. _Lovely_, she thought. _Just what I want to hear the day before our second huge concert. Someone's trying to kill us_. "So why exactly are you here?"

Again that glance over at Khashoggi, as though asking what he could say and what was still top-secret. "When did you do your last concert?"

"Couple of months after Wembley. Why?" Galileo nibbled his bottom lip.

"Nobody knew what the hell was going on then," said Fruvous, carefully. "We think the Yes-Things and High-ups thought KQ might still be alive as a fugitive in the network at that point and were trying to regroup or something."

"Impossible," said Khashoggi from his place by the door. "I've been monitoring the software since last year and if there was even the slightest possibility she was still there, I'd know."

"Excellent," said Fruvous.

_So that's why he's been so bloody determined to reboot the network_, thought Scara.

"We think they've given up on finding her," Fruvous continued. "And they've had time to get reorganized and plan. Your first concert was," he paused, looking down for a moment, and the feathery shadows of his hair made him look very young. "Amazing. I don't think you know how many people saw it on the casts. We loved it. Anyway. It was insanely popular; the leftovers probably know they haven't got a chance in hell of taking over again, and we're still bringing them in." Scara saw Khashoggi move slightly, and again reorganized her concept of what exactly he spent his time at work doing. "But there are enough out there to, uh, make trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" said Galileo abruptly.

Fruvous and Khashoggi exchanged glances. "We are not precisely certain," said the Commander.

"But we thought we should warn you," said the other man. "We'll be around. Us and some other people you'll meet tomorrow."

Galileo bit his lip and looked over at Scara. Her response said clearly, _don't even think about it_. She slid off the table and said awkwardly, "Thanks. Feel free to go to the party and stuff. Can you give us a minute, right?"

Moxy Fruvous produced a rather infectious smile. "Certainly. You have a good night; we'll see you officially tomorrow, eh?"

Khashoggi opened the door and the two policemen went out. The door clicked sweetly into place and Galileo jumped up. "You're not doing the concert."

"Excuse me?" Scaramouche turned to face him, hands on her hips. "Don't even think about it, Gazz. You can't make me, and that's all I have to say about it."

"But - " He bit his lip again. "Something might happen to you." He reached forward for her shoulders and she dodged, glaring.

"Something might happen to _you_."

"I don't want – I can't – Dammit, Scara, I care about you." He caught her shoulders and pulled. "You. You, you, you. I didn't realize getting hurt was in the question, and, I mean," he dropped his chin forward to rest on her head, hands tight around her shoulders. "Oh, sod it. I can't talk. I don't want you in danger."

"Know something, Gazza?" Scaramouche said, slightly muffled against his chest. "You can't do anything about that." She pulled away. "We're a team, yeah. We're a fucking _band_. We're all in danger – you, me, Meat, Big Macca, everybody. And we need each other."

"But - "

"Bullshit," she said, breaking out his grasp entirely. "I don't play, you don't play, nobody plays. End of story."

"Well then, maybe nobody plays," he said, hotly. "No, don't be stupid."

"Don't be _stupid_?"

"I do my own keyboard. Me and Big Macca can cover bass and melody fine, and we'll be all right."

"Because you're big, strong men? _God_!" Scara yelled, face flushed angry pink. She banged both fists against the wall and received a satisfying _thud_ in response. "And Meat and I will cower in the background like helpless little _girls_? I swear to God, Gazz," she said, spinning on him. Her voice began low and chilly, and rose to a shriek, "if you go all chauvinistic like this, I will fucking _murder_ you. Don't you dare try and block me out because you think you know better! You don't; you don't know anything except how to make people feel good, which is pretty damn useless in the real world. We're playing tomorrow. All of us."

Galileo looked appalled. "I'm just trying to keep you safe."

"I don't _need_ god-bloody-damned keeping safe!" Scaramouche howled. "I need to be treated like a real, intelligent _person_ instead of a Gaga-brained cow of a groupie." Abruptly she gave what sounded like a sob, and turned and ran out of the door.

Galileo stared at the open door in complete wonderment for a few seconds, then dived forward, leaning out of the doorway. "I can't do anything right, can I?" he yelled down the corridor. There was no response. "Well, what do you _want_ me to do?" he called after her. Again, no response. He buried his hands in his hair. "_Now_ what I am supposed to do?" he demanded the empty hall.

Scara pushed her way through the crowd to the bar. On the first floor, those who hadn't heard the shouting avoided her anyway. Watching people slink out of her way, she wondered if this was how Khashoggi felt all the time. It didn't improve her mood. She planted both hands on the plastic bar table and scowled at Pop. "Got anything 200 proof?"

The bartender looked at her and whistled softly. " 'Fraid not, scary witch-lady."

A human throat shouldn't have been capable of that sort of growl. "Pop, do you _want_ to be castrated in front of a large group of people, because right now, I'd be more than happy…"

The man spun around to the bottles and then placed a glass of rum in front of her. She glared, then lifted it and knocked it back. The glass thunked down. "More."

Pop refilled it, and a new hand landed on the girl's shoulder, knocking her forward. "Shame on you, Pop," said Big Macca's mellow voice. "Shame, shame, shame. She's got you pussy-whipped too?"

"And proud of it," said the bartender morosely.

Macca picked up the glass and drank it, with a wink at the girl. Then he coughed. "Aw, fuck me!" The smoke from his joint wafted around the bar and Scara, murder in her eyes, stood up, walked around Big Macca, and plucked it out of his fingers. She dropped it on the ground and crushed it.

"I'd rather not," she said. "_We_ have a concert tomorrow. What the hell are you thinking, smoking that shit?"

"It's not until night-time," complained Big Macca.

"We need you for set-up and testing and rehearsal tomorrow morning. You are not going to smoke anything, shoot anything, snort anything at all tonight. We need you _functional_!"

Pop quietly refilled the glass. Scara grabbed it and stalked off. People moved out her way.

It took a few minutes to find a quiet corner behind some kind of fake plant where Scara could sit and lean her forehead against the cool window. _I_, she thought desperately, _am such a mess._

Someone else picked up her drink. "Heard you were having a go at Paul for smoking," said Meat Loaf conversationally.

Scara didn't move. "He gets high as a kite, you know that. And then he's completely useless for the next twelve hours. We don't have that. He just shouldn't be smoking. Full stop."

"And you shouldn't be drinking. Full stop." Meat sat down in a slight rustle, and Scara smelled perfume and cigarette smoke.

"What are you talking about? I can drink anybody here under the table, you know that. _And_ I'm fine in the mornings."

There was a clink and a gulp. Meat touched her shoulder. "Not these mornings."

"OK, so maybe that was an exaggeration. I get kind of sick."

"You get kind of sick even when you _haven't_ been drinking." Scara turned away from the window and found herself facing down a pair of bright green, inquisitive eyes.

"What are you saying?" she asked.

Meat squeezed the shoulder. "Don't play dumb with me, Scara; it doesn't suit you. You planning on telling him soon?"

"Oh, for the love of God, Meat. Not now. I'm not - " Meat raised one eyebrow in cool skepticism. Scara rolled her eyes. "Fine, I guess I am. But I can't - " She could feel frustrated panic welling up inside her. "I'm going to deal with it after the concert, yeah?"

Her misery must have been obvious, because Meat's face changed suddenly, and she leaned forward. "Aww, Babe." Meat hugged her. "Sssh. I'm sorry I was teasing you. I forgot how nervous you get before these things. It's gonna be OK. Really. Ssssh…"

Scara wriggled out of the other girl's grasp. "How could you tell?"

Meat fixed her with a cynical green eye. "Did I ever tell you what I did before the Heartbreak found me?"

"Um. No?"

"I dropped out of school and I bunked down on the streets with the junkies and the prostitutes. Trust me, there is nothing I don't know about sex, kids, and contraception." Meat wrinkled her nose. "That was eight weeks of an education you don't get at VirtualHigh, let me tell you. Gaga girls got contraceptives through their food – did you know that?" Scara shook her head. She'd never bothered to wonder about it, since VirtualHigh was nearly all flirtation. "It was part of the diet supplements. Once you go underground…" she shrugged delicately. "Not so much. And I don't suppose anyone has reorganized _that_ particular aspect of Planet Mall. If anybody's in charge of it, it's Commander Khashoggi. Ooof. Can you imagine?" Scara laughed a little at the expression on Meat's face. "I mean," the girl continued, "it was bound to happen. You haven't been getting those supplements for almost a year, and, well, you and Gazz…"

Scara aimed a calibrated glare. "Yeah? Me and Gazz _what_?"

Meat smirked. "You've been having some quality fandango time, that's all."

"Look, just because _you're_ not getting any doesn't mean you can make fun of me, all right."

Meat tipped her head back and laughed for a long time. When she finally stopped, she grinned at Scara. "You still stroppy?"

"Guess not."

"Good. Go out and dance." Meat stood up. "This is your party, Scaramouche. You deserve it. We are going to rock tomorrow, so go have a good time." She winked. "Dance with the fit one with green hair if you can't find Gazz."

_Gazz_, Scara thought, her stomach going cold again. _Damn_. "You dance with him if you think he's fit."

Meat's face twitched a little. "I'm not in a dancing mood," she said quietly.

"Whatever," said Scara, putting off the question of Meat's emotional problems until tomorrow.

Scara escaped and went to bed fairly early. Tomorrow was going to be a long day and she wanted to sleep. It would also allow her to stop thinking about the look on Gazz's face when she yelled at him, or the guiltily dividing cells in her abdomen. So when Galileo came upstairs much later, he found her curled in the welter of blankets with her hair tied in knots around her face. They kept promising themselves they would find a proper bed somewhere, but never quite getting around to it. So they still slept, as they had since the indescribable madness of Wembley, on a large mattress covered in a nest of blankets. He slipped off his boots with a faint grin _…AND the fact that you kept your shoes on…_ and slid down next to her. Streetlights shining through the crack in the shades lined her face in gold and caught on the curling eyelashes and determined chin. It illuminated the dried tear tracks that skidded over her cheeks and into her hair and Galileo sighed. He touched her hair. _You. You, you, you._ It seemed to repeat in his head, a silly, pointless refrain that bashed at the gates she put up around herself. _I love you, I love you, I love you_. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. "Why is it we're only peaceful when you're asleep?" he whispered, with a helpless, rhetorical shrug to the quiet air. He looked at the tear tracks with concern, and pulled her close. "You belong with me, skirmisher. Stop shutting me out."

She moved, and curled up to him. "Gazz?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry."

He pushed her hair back, long pianist's fingers gentle. "I know. Me too."

"Gazz?"

"Hmm?"

She paused. Tomorrow. After the concert. Then she could tell him, curled up in the dark, just like this. "Never mind."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." She snuggled closer, needing to be held. "I'll tell you tomorrow."


	2. Chapter 2

_**(A/N)** In which there will be more plot, though not necessarily less fluffy angst. Don't own anything except Moxy, and he's pretty boring at the moment. I think I even stole the fact that Scara gets stage fright from somewhere (Scaramouche Figaro, was that you? Sorry!). Thanks to Tom O'Bedlam for technical lighting help. In terms of M/K shipping, this comes after Whiskey and Rye. I would have made Meat simply contemplating a relationship with Bob, not a marriage, but other than that, the story stands in all its glory (oh, and I still think she's a bit older than Scara and Gazz, so think mid-twenties). For the flashbacks…oh, never mind. Go read the extant canon yourself; flashbacks are from there._

"Testing, testing."

"Pop, it works!"

"Oi, didn't I _tell_ you people not to move the set without me? The snare's a mess…"

"Sir Paul McCartney, you get your sorry stoned ass over here _right_ now!"

"Sure, Mum."

"Where's Scaramouche? Scara, we really, really need you!"

Learning over a toilet, the girl looked up and shivered. She couldn't figure out if it was morning sickness or nerves, or both. "You better be worth it, kid," she muttered as she stood up.

"Has anybody seen my jacket?"

"Where the _hell_ are the eight-foot cables?"

"Who left the dry-ice machine over here?"

"Scara, are you really going out there like that?" Meat grabbed her lead guitarist outside the makeup trailer.

"I need an eight-foot cable with a three prong thingy. The lighting's gone all pear-shaped and I have to go and…"

Two hands gripped her shoulders and steered her firmly into the dressing room. "Bowie is a perfectly competent electrician, and you have to go out there in front of a crowd of screaming fans in an hour. And, sorry babe, but you look like shit."

Scara sat down in the nearest chair. "Funny, I feel like shit," she said vaguely, then focused suddenly on Meat. "And _please_ don't mention the crowd of screaming fans?"

"You're gonna be brilliant, love," said Big Macca, who had wandered in. He leaned over and kissed her. Meat slapped his shoulder.

"Stop that. Where's the Dreamer?"

"Here. Hey, what are you doing?"

Big Macca stopped and looked imperturbably at the band's frontman. "Making your chick feel better, dude. You do it."

"Where's my jacket?"

"Over there, you idiot," said Scara, pointing. She rubbed her face. "Fine. We'll get this organized. Meat, what's wrong with me? I'm wearing the right clothes."

"Yeah, but your face needs some help."

"I don't do makeup," said Scaramouche firmly.

"That's all right then," said Meat, reaching for a box. "Because I do."

Punctuated by curses, giggles, much cajoling, and requests that Galileo and Big Macca stop laughing, Meat did makeup. She was almost finished when someone banged on the trailer door. "Damn," she said, and went to open it. "Oh." The silence was tangible. "Hullo."

Andrei Khashoggi stared down at Meat in full concert gear, and mentally cursed. _I'm not the kind to wait around_, she had said. And disappeared._ Oh, damn. I don't need this now._ "Hullo."

Moxy Fruvous poked his friend in the back. "Hi. We're security." Meat nodded. "You've got fifteen minutes, and they want you onstage. You ready?"

"Yeah," said Big Macca.

"What? Sure," said Galileo.

"No," said Scaramouche.

"Um," said Meat Loaf.

Big Macca sighed. "They. Want. Us. On. The. Stage."

They trailed out, Scara holding the Axe in a death grip and trying not to think of much. Her eyes, coated in black eyeliner, itched and her face felt like it belonged to somebody else. In the dusk of the wings Galileo suddenly turned and looked down at her. Of all of them, he got away with the easy clothes. In the imagination of the world, the Dreamer was clad in his jeans and gray tank and leather jacket. The jacket was somewhere else at the moment and she could see all the muscles in his arms and shoulders. She focused on the tattoo around his bicep, a peculiar bit of decoration he'd never explained. He was wearing eyeliner too, but other than that, he was Gazz. Just Gazz. And he was staring at her. "You look amazing, Scara," he said suddenly. "Absolutely amazing."

"Does this mean that normally I'm a mess or something?"

"No, it just means that you look incredible and that we are going to rock these kids so hard they'll end up in next week." He smiled.

Out there, the terrifying mob of the audience yelled. And since people tended to do what he wanted them to when the Dreamer smiled at them, Scara moved her fingers on her guitar and hit a chord. It belled onto the stage and washed beneficently over the audience. They cheered more. From somewhere, a chant started. "Sca-ra-mouche! Sca-ra-mouche!" Gazz squeezed her shoulder and whispered, "These are the days it never rains but it pours. Go get 'em, skirmisher." And she turned to look at him, so he saw her eyes light up as she found energy from nowhere, and ran out onto the stage, guitar cradled in her arms and ready to fight battles. The chant erupted into a cheer, and she was joined by Big Macca. And then the lights panned back over Meat, and then they could start playing.

First a beat: one-two-_three_ and one-two-_three_, and then bass, and then a guitar yowl. Backstage, Galileo was coming alive, the beat in his blood. "Hey!" he yelled, and the audience reaction was more intoxicating than anything he could imagine. "Let's go!" The guitar sounded like a helicopter, and he could see Scara bouncing up and down, and Meat's dreds flying. He took a deep breath, and ran for it, sliding onto the stage on his knees, mike in one hand. "_I want to break free. I want to break free from your lies, you're so self-satisfied, I don't need you!_"

Scara was right. They were a band, a team. He took his place at the keyboard, and could feel them behind him, a mesh of sound supporting him as his voice headed for the stratosphere. Guitar, bass and drums formed a cradle to hold him, something that tied intricate shapes in the music he created, and twisted the melody line until he barely recognized it.

The audience loved it and even the security men, sitting at the high stands in the back with a clear view of the crowd, were distracted. Andrei Khashoggi, one of the few people in the audience immune to the stage presence of the Dreamer, watched the flashing fire behind the drumset and abandoned his control for a few precious hours. Moxy Fruvous sat with his mouth open, taking in the sight with a kind of worship in his eyes. But their inattention was forgivable, and besides, very little happened that would concern them. Granted, a woman did throw her knickers onstage during to beginning of "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy." Meat, attempting to keep a beat and sing in close harmony, felt like she might explode at the sight of Scara's glare. Galileo, it appeared, didn't notice. The band did "Waterloo" and "Big Spender" and then "Another One Bites the Dust," which Khashoggi endured with a scowl worthy of Scaramouche. Onstage, they finished that number to an overwhelming cheer. Galileo threw his head back and yelled. Scara, keeping time with chords, made the mistake of looking directly at him and nearly forgot what she was doing. With a mike, he was alive in a way he rarely was offstage. You had to watch him; all life and fun and dazzle and _something_ she couldn't explain. Gazz…He turned and looked at her with a brilliant, mischievous smile and her heart twisted. Two steps, and he was close to her, sweating and glittering under the lights, his face alight with music and excitement. He grabbed her chin and kissed her. The audience went crazy, and Galileo stopped to look at them and wave a hand at them. Then he kissed her again.

The programme wound down finally. The fatigue was starting to hover around their eyes and the backs of their heads. It was a star-spangled fatigue, crazy and full of lights, a fog of ecstasy and adrenoline Four songs to the end, and they were all counting, wanting it to last forever, and wanting to stop now so they could melt into little pools on the stage. Galileo looked at them, nodded, and then sang caressingly into his mike, "_It's a kind of magic…it's a kind of magic…_"

Everyone was tired and drunk on glamour fumes. _One dream, one soul_. There was eddy in the crowd below, too fast for normal concert behavior. _One prize, one goal. _What was it? Another crazy fan, or something else? Khashoggi craned to see, his sluggish brain suddenly aware something was out of order. _One golden glance of what should be._ Galileo tipped his head back and the band hit one chord in perfect, heart-breaking unison.Khashoggi jumped forward with an oath, and Fruvous beside him. Their other security helpers, hardened ex-Bohemians began to move. They were too slow. All of them. Scaramouche, strumming the wide broken chords, watched with the frozen spectator's eyes, as though it were far away, happening on a holoscreen in her house and not in front of her.

_One shaft of light that shows the way_. He came out of the crowd like some strange animal rising on a thermal vent, flying forward with a gun throwing a single line of green fire at the stage. Like a small, exploding star, it hit.

_No mortal man can win this day_. Body working automatically, she hit another chord for a voice that wasn't singing anymore. A voice that would never sing again. Galileo Figaro, the Dreamer, fell backwards in a graceful arc, and landed, flat and inert, under the lights that loved him.

_The bell that rings inside your mind Is challenging the doors of time_. She dropped her precious guitar with a crash and fell onto both knees next to him, dragging the body – so heavy for such a thin boy – backwards to rest his head on her lap. Khashoggi came charging out of the wings with Fruvous on his heels to grab the attacker, but by this point she didn't care. All she cared about was this oddly pale face on her lap and the blood on her fingers and the long dark eyelashes lying still.

_The day has gone of sanity_. Someone was screaming. Someone else was crying, deep rough, gulping sobs that struggled from somewhere very deep in their body. She was shaking and she was cold. The world was fundamentally out of balance, and all around her was the sound of helpless tears. When they tried to take the body, she held on ferociously. Someone detached her and held her as she cried more. Someone carried her home, and put her onto the mattress and she curled into a ball in the sheets that smelled of sweetness and absolute trust and cried until she slept.

Meat Loaf and Big Macca stood on either side of the bed, looking down at the little sleeping figure. Big Macca took a deep breath and came to hug Meat before leaving the room. He looked flabbergasted; as though he couldn't bear to believe that someone would kill the Dreamer he had spent five years waiting for. Meat stayed a little longer, trying not to replay Galileo's trajectory, which was so similar to Brit's. Too similar, and the old loss hurt almost as much as the numbness of the new. Finally she turned and walked blindly towards the doorway. In the hall she moved vaguely, walking straight ahead because she knew that eventually the stairs or a wall would stop her. In fact it was another human being she blundered into; a human being who reacted instinctively by putting his arms around her and burying his face in her hair and holding her so tightly that she gradually forgot she was one person, only that in this strange shifting universe punctuated by green light, she had something to hang onto.

Eventually it occurred to Meat to look more closely at the shoulder her head rested on. It was light gray, and the scent was musky and just a little bitter and unmistakable. She turned her face upwards and said gravely, "Andrei."

Commander Khashoggi's eyes glittered and for a moment she thought he wouldn't be able to speak. Then he said, "You screamed, earlier. Are you all right?"

She nodded. "And you?" Her voice didn't seem to work properly. When had she last really spoken to him? She couldn't remember. It must have been months ago, when she told him that she and Bob were an item. Never mind it didn't last long. Never mind the confused hurt she'd felt when she realized that she'd imagined the way he (never Bob. always Khashoggi.) watched her. Never mind the unmistakable sound of a glass shattering against the wall that she had heard when she left his flat and stood outside the door, her hands over her mouth as she tried not to cry so loud that he would hear.

"I'm a failure," he said. "A useless, incompetent waste of an investigator. What was it? Oh yes, a pig. That would do, I think." He loosened his arms. "Have you got a spare bedroom here?"

"Andrei," she began, then saw the sick self-loathing imprinted in the lines of his face. "I can sleep down this way. Come with me?"

He followed because it was the way to the stairs and he had work to be done in the atrium that night. Outside the door he stopped because he was too tired to bother with subtlety. Apparently she was too. "Where are you sleeping, then?" Her face was trailed in melting makeup, and her eyes, always, full of a breathtaking generosity. Once she had asked him to stay. Once they had been friends. Once…

"I'm not sleeping," he said, more harshly than he had intended. "There is no rest for the wicked, Meat Loaf."

"You could," she said, softly, and his heart tightened. "I don't want to be alone right now."

"You're wasting your time."

The pert little mouth dropped open and she said, thickly, "What?"

"This is no reason to start anything," Khashoggi said. "I'm too old for you, too stupid for you, too talentless for you, and, in any case, you have already made it clear that I'm not interested enough in you to make it worth your while." He clicked his heels and bowed. "I begin to see the wisdom of dating Bob the Builder."

"Now, that is not fair!" Enraged and desperate, she grabbed his lapels. "You are nothing of the kind, and you know it." She was going to kiss him. That particular action at this particular moment would not be necessary. It would be, for a number of reasons, a mistake.

"Ssssh," he whispered, and because he couldn't quite resist it, he put out both hands and cupped her face. One thumb brushed across her lower lip. "Go to sleep, Meat Loaf. Don't start anything you'll regret, especially not with the man who killed your lover and your Dreamer, hmm?" And then he was striding down the hall and she could hear the sound of feet on the stairs, and from somewhere below, voices. Meat Loaf shut her door and dreamed of death and green fire. Downstairs Khashoggi fetched Moxy Fruvous and a bottle of rye whiskey and proceeded, in his methodical way, to deal with two problems at once.


	3. Chapter 3

_**(A/N) **Sorry about the Vegas joke. It snuck in and then I didn't want to get rid of it. Standard don't own it jokes apply to everything you recognize. Khashoggi's French is an old adage that translates as "the more things change, the more they stay the same." This chapter is for Tom O'Bedlam because I know she's procrastinating, and because she a) wanted to know why Scara was drawn to Gazz during Under Pressure and b) was the ONLY person who cared about the actual action of the last chapter._

They emerged the next morning to blink at each other in a morning that proved that last night was, in fact, real. Meat sat by a vacant Big Macca and drank her sweet coffee, staring at the scarred plastic of the table as though she'd never seen it before. A door opened somewhere, and five Bohemians jumped. Fruvous was dressed neatly, but he clearly hadn't slept, and was sprouting pale gold stubble. "Would you please come this way?" he said. "The Commander thought you'd like to meet the perp."

Bowie, Aretha, and Charlotte looked at their former leaders. Big Macca shrugged. Meat stood up. "All right, you lot. Let's go have a look." They followed Meat, who followed the young Statesman into the basement.

They were joined at the door by an impassive Khashoggi, clean-shaven and excessively neat, coming from the other direction. He scanned his hand and stood aside for them to enter. They were underground, and while the room was not precisely a cell, it awakened old memories. Meat shivered and she felt Macca beside her shake. They crowded in and Khashoggi closed the door behind him. The lights fizzled into life, and they all saw the largish room with a young man sitting on a chair in a green laser cell. Meat could feel the hum through the floor, thrumming through her feet. Old fear, a year forgotten, twitched and moved in her stomach. _And so, Mr. McCartney, I've said hello and you say good-bye…You'll never take the Dreamer alive._

"Good morning," said Khashoggi softly. He glanced at the computerized clipboard in his hand. It was a neat gadget, built, Meat remembered, by Scara and programmed by the Commander. "Ricky at theGardeners dot com, Yes-Thing and former Gaga kid. We'd like to talk to you."

"I won't tell you anything, pig!" said the man. Meat winced.

Khashoggi sighed, fastidiously. "_Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose_. Ricky, I don't believe I've introduced my friends." He pointed at each Bohemian in turn. "Sir Paul McCartney, Meat Loaf, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Charlotte Friggin' Church. And the two gentlemen by the door are Prince and Bob the Builder."

Ricky stared at the seven Bohemians. "They gonna beat me up while you watch, pig?"

"Really, Ricky," said Khashoggi. "Whose custody do you think you are in? I simply want to ask you some questions."

The Yes-Thing gulped. "Yeah? And who are you then?"

"Oh, I do apologize." Khashoggi inclined his head. "I am Commander Khashoggi, formerly of Globalsoft, Inc. You may have heard of me." Everyone saw Ricky Gardener's face turn slowly whiter and whiter.

"I won't talk," he said, voice shaking.

"No? What a pity." Khashoggi touched a few buttons on his keyboard and slipped it into a jacket pocket. "I think, Mr. Gardener, that I will leave you some time to think about that," he paused, "_firm_ resolution. We'll be back in an hour."

"We?"

"Me, and my colleague Bowie there, who can do some amazing things with electrodes. And maybe Prince. He's good at holding people. Oh, and possibly another officer, whom I think you saw last night." He turned towards the door. "Ladies, gentlemen, I think we should leave Mr. Gardener in privacy."

Meat didn't realized she was shivering until Aretha put an arm around her shoulders. "Hang in there, babes," the other girl murmured. They filed towards the exit, hoping for fresh air and light. From his chair, Ricky Gardener yelled, "Fine, I'll…I'll tell you what I know."

Khashoggi snorted softly. "For a Yes-thing, he has an amazingly effective imagination. I thought it would take the whole hour." He raised his voice. "Thank you, Ricky." He moved through the group neatly and dragged a chair to the centre of the room, his clipboard out again. The Bohemians clustered near the door, mesmerized by being on the other side of the laser cage and unwillingly caught by the whole encounter.

"Tell me about yourself, Ricky. Where are you from?"

"Nevada District. We've always been there, and now they're joining us. Gaga from everywhere…We saw your concert, by the way. It sucked; nothing happened. Just lots and lots of sound and fancy stage stuff."

Big Macca leaned forward and whispered, "Bet he saw the Vegas version. He's right – it was absolute crap." Aretha smacked his arm

It was excruciating, listening to that emotionless, needle-like voice prodding and questioning. They knew what it was like, to a greater or lesser extent. They knew how it felt to be inside a cage like that with that voice talking, talking, talking. Eventually someone opened the door and they all jumped. Fruvous looked at the cluster of Bohemians and the silhouette of the Commander and shook his head. "You don't need to be here," he said softly. "Go upstairs." And they fled, back to their hard-won sky.

Meat was slumped in a window-seat, staring at the London rain spattering the window in a sullen late afternoon when someone cleared his throat. She turned, twitching. "What do you want?"

Khashoggi's face was composed, voice a little harsh. "Moxy wants to see you at the back. He says Galileo isn't dead."

Meat stared. "What?"

"That doesn't mean he'll stay that way," said the Commander shortly. "But at the moment, he is, technically, alive."

She was off the window-seat in a moment, running headlong for the stairs, and up to a room on the second floor. "Scara!"

The girl was sitting on the mattress, holding her knees, hair uncombed and falling in front of her face. "Go away, Meat."

"No, you have to come downstairs." Meat was out of breath. "Fruvous says that the Dreamer - "

Scara looked up. Her eyeliner was smudged and stark black on a white face. "Meat, please don't…"

"He might be alive." Scara didn't move, only stared with that blank look. Meat leaned forward and grabbed the other girl's wrists, pulling her to her feet. "Come _on_."

There was an impromptu hospital set up in the back of the building. A few white-coated doctors moved around the room and Moxy Fruvous waited by the door, leaning against the wall and to all appearances asleep on his feet. He lurched to attention as Scaramouche rushed past him, skidding to a halt beside the gurney in the centre of the room. "Gazz," she said, voice thick and full of tears. "Gazz."

Late afternoon, peace and quiet throughout the big old building. "Gazz? Gazza Fizzer? Shagileo Gigolo? I can't call you Galileo Figaro…it isn't you. It's what everybody else calls you, but I can't. It's too pretentious, too stuck-up." Someone had found her a chair and warned her that he was just hanging on, that'd they'd probably lose him sometime this evening. But she couldn't move. "So apparently you can't hear me. Load of bollocks, I think. But that's just me, yeah? Did you hear those Gaga girls at the last party? Before the Commander's friend arrived and I had a go at you. I actually think I went to school with them. Weird, huh? So the one of them is like, 'she's only with him because he's famous. He could do so much better.' They thought I was getting in your way, right? That I wasn't good enough for you. But, wanna know something, they're wrong. Look, Gazz, you need me. Everybody can see that. I just don't think anybody sees the fact that I need you. I need you holding on to me at night when I don't have to bad-arse and I can say I'm scared. I need you to tell me I'm beautiful, because I think you're the only person who really believes it; it's just you believe it so strongly that everybody thinks you're right and goes along with it. I need you because you are the only person who I can argue with even when you're unconscious. I just," she swallowed. There were no more tears, but there was still that heavy, sick feeling of impending sobs.

"I just need you. Every single, argumentative inch of you. Shit, Gazz, I'm pregnant. I was going to tell you that, I really was. But I was so fucking scared, you know? Remember when we woke up in the lab? You looked at me with these big huge eyes that saw loads more than anybody else, and you saw me like a real person. I thought you were a nutter, but at the same time, you were…someone else, yeah? Somebody special. And then you said, 'I know I'm different' and I believed you. And I couldn't figure out if I liked you or not, but either way, you gave me a name and a way out, and I was stuck with you. I was scared then too, but you assumed that we would do it together, but you assumed so strongly that even I couldn't argue with you. Do it together…damn, Gazz, you good as promised! And now I need you. I do, Gazz, I really do." She rested her head on the side of the bed. "You'll probably run off with Stacey or Kylie or one of those tall ones, specially when you find out I'm pregnant, but dammit, you need to come back so I can yell at you about it. Gazz. Gazza Fizzer." And, softly, "Galileo."

It was an uncertain twilight, purple and gold and dark blue. Meat slipped in and looked at the _pieta_ on the hospital gurney. She walked to the other side and spoke carefully, trying not to wake Scaramouche. "Hey, Babe. I got a story for you. You heard I dropped out of school when I was sixteen? Well, I did. I hid out on the street for a bit and later on, when it was almost winter, I met this guy near a trashcan. We got in a fight about who got the sandwich crusts and I almost kicked his ass. Well, almost. And I was screaming at him, and he just looked at me and he said, 'Hey, girl, you know how to sing?' And I said, 'Gaga songs? No.' And he said, 'You got a hell of a set of pipes, that's all.' And then he sang me a real song." Looking down at the bed, the she hummed softly, "_She's got a ticket to ride. She's got a ticket to ri-i-i-de, and she don't care_. And then he told me about Rock and the Past, and a mystical Dreamer who was going to bring back real music to everybody. I loved him, okay? You know how that feels. I loved him, and he died, and I never want to go through anything like that again. So you can't die, see? You can't because if you do we're all going to fall apart. Like Scara says, we're a band, but if you ask me, we need all four of us. Queen wasn't just Freddie, you know, but they sure had a hell of a time after _he_ died. We need you."

Evening, with Scaramouche forcibly removed and made to eat, Big Macca strolled over to the bed. "Hey, man. What's up? Listen, Dreamer, I waited for you for five years. I starved for you, all right? I lay around in junk piles looking for instruments and people and anything that might make music. So you got no business running off and abandoning us yet. You owe us, man. Me and everybody else who came out of the Heartbreak, 'cause we believe in you. We saved your ass once, but we didn't expect you to go and lose it right after. We need your music. We need _you_."

Khashoggi came at night, leaning against the wall and cloaked in his habitually ironic look. "One crazy kid with a dream and a bad-arsed babe to fight for. Do you know how much time and effort and worry I have expended on you, Galileo? Far more than you think…You were my responsibility since you hit year ten. I know everything about you – I doubt you knew _that_. I know why you were hospitalized so many times in high school. I know what you did in the middle of the night when everybody was asleep. I imprisoned you, I used you, I almost killed you. And then what did you do? You looked at me when I stood in the middle of a party and you told me I could stay. You gave me something to do. You saved me, I think, and I, as you can see, was completely unable to save you, no matter how much time I've spent on you. I'm a failure, Dreamer, and I'm deeply sorry that you had the misfortune to depend on me." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "They – We – Christ, _I_ need you."


	4. Chapter 4

**(A/N)**_ You know what isn't mine. Khashoggi has acquired the ability to quote Shakespeare; I thought it might come in handy, as things get slightly philosophical. But this is not to say he's a nice guy, exactly. Please let me if you think the imagery is a little over the top; I have an antihero complex and a love for melodrama (as if you hadn't noticed)._

Meat Loaf sat in the curve of the stairs and fidgeted, picking at a spot of loose wallpaper and, underneath, old plaster. She could hear voices at the bottom of the stairs and, after a moment, saw the shapes of two men come around the corner. She automatically scrunched back into the shadows to remain unseen, then told herself she was being silly. The shorter man pushed straying hair out of his eyes with a neat movement she recognized, and sat down on the stairs. The other man's shadow loomed for a moment and then she could see a sleek gray shoulder, though not the face. _Damn_. There would be no getting out of this one, then; if it had been anyone else, she would have said hell with it and gone down, but not with him. She'd have to stay here, for his quick eyes would catch her if she moved either up or down. And she didn't think her self-esteem could take that at the moment.

"Tell me about that man in the cells," said Khashoggi. _Never wastes any time_, Meat thought, digging harder at the plaster. _Always has to get right to the point. Except, of course, when he doesn't know there's a point._

"What, have you been down there so long that you interrogate everybody now?" said Moxy Fruvous with more temper than he usually showed.

Khashoggi's shadow swooped. "_Don't_ evade the question. You were down there after we arrested him. You talked to him while we were taking care of the band last night. He knows you." Softly, "He's terrified of you."

Fruvous's head jerked up. "And? He's terrified of you too."

"Everybody's terrified of me," said Khashoggi sharply. "It's a universal phobia. You, however, people tend to like."

"Not Ricky Gardener," said Fruvous.

"And what I want to know, Moxy Fruvous," Khashoggi rolled the soft syllables over his tongue slowly, "is _why_."

There was a pause. Then Fruvous said abruptly, "Dear God! You can't be thinking that I'd – that I'm – that we're working together."

"Why?" The voice was chilly. Meat knew that voice and it terrified her. She remembered the grip of chill fingers locked on her chin, forcing it up. _Nothing to say? Pity._ And she touched her hand to her cheek in memory of a phantom slap. "I have every reason," Khashoggi continued coldly, "to believe that you came as a team. I have no reason to believe that you, in fact, have serendipitous previous knowledge of one another. I think you should tell me, don't you?" Khashoggi's voice dropped to a thread of sound. "_Before I have you arrested_. My Bohemians don't take kindly to those who injure their precious Dreamer, Fruvous." From her perch on the stairs, Meat almost choked. _My_ Bohemians! How dare he! How dare he threaten anybody with the Bohemians. As if they were his private army! The arrogance was…unbelievable.

"Peter Sandley," said Moxy Fruvous, his voice hoarse. "Corporal Peter Sandley. That used to be my name. I went to school like all the other kids. I played on the hologround at recess, I swapped virtual lunch meals, all that. I don't know when I started hearing something wrong with the music they were blasting, but I guess I was maybe twelve. I don't know. It didn't sound right, but I decided I just, you know, didn't have an ear for music or something. Heaven forbid that I be a rebel. I was a normal kid, good at sports and stuff. Virtual hockey, football, soccer, basketball. All of them. My principal put me through to the training school when I graduated – she said I was going to be a good officer on the police force. You know the type."

"Solid, good at games, not too bright," said Khashoggi. "It's a very nice biography, Sandley, and it is exactly what I found in your files, except for the music reference, which can be neither proved nor disproved. Get to the point, please."

" I also had a sister, well, she was Becky then. She was younger – she adored me."

"How nice."

"You, I take it, didn't have family?" said Fruvous with a touch of irony.

"Don't be decadent."

"Mack Gardiner was my officer. He liked me, I liked him. He introduced me to his son and two daughters, all in civil service. Yes-things. They were nice too. We got on fine – I dated his daughter a couple of times. I was on the way up, everybody said."

Khashoggi was patient. "Get to the point."

"I killed him. Mack Gardiner, I mean." Fruvous was shaking now, his shoulders twitching as though he were cold. "He arrested – I can't," the young man let go of his knees and swallowed convulsively, looking up at the Commander, who stood over him with crossed arms like an avenging angel. "He arrested my sister!" Fruvous yelled. "He hurt her. He had her in the office, pushed up against the wall, and she was screaming, screaming…"

Meat couldn't see Khashoggi's face; just the silhouette. She turned away, curling sideways on the steps, edging back from invisible jailers with murder in their eyes and truncheons and steel-tipped boots.

There was a moment of silence. Then Khashoggi said in the same silky voice, "And Gardiner the younger knows you killed his father?"

"Yes."

Khashoggi moved then, pacing with his hands linked behind his back. "I'd like you to go talk to our friend Ricky," he said in a voice that made it very clear that the request was in fact a command.

The Statesman lifted his head from his hands. "What? But you were down there all day."

"And I learned very little. He's afraid of you; he'll talk."

"God! I – I can't."

Khashoggi whirled and the skirts of his greatcoat flared like wings. "He's not the only fanatic to come over. There's a whole den of them, somewhere. I _need_ to find them."

_Is that how he sounded when he was telling the police to go after us?_ thought Meat. _Did he loom like that over some subordinate, did he move like something predatory and dangerous? And does he realize that he's doing that now?_

"Andrei, you don't understand. I loved my sister. I _killed_ a man for her," Moxy Fruvous was crying now, voice shaking. "How the hell do you expect me to go talk to one of my friends, now that I've killed his father. He loved his father too, you know. Did I love Becky more or something? I - "

"You're trained to kill, Moxy," said Khashoggi in an odd voice, stopping sbruptly. "We both are. We're not trained…to love. I think sometimes that fact alone makes it even harder to love than to kill."

"You talk like killing and loving are the same thing," said Fruvous, sounding unsure.

"That death's unnatural that kills for loving," said Khashoggi softly.

"What?"

"It's an old story. A man who killed his wife because he thought she was unfaithful." Khashoggi's silhouette shook itself and continued speaking in his normal, precise voice. "One case in which love and murder are intimately intertwined. I gather this was more of a problem before the Cyber-lution." He knelt, suddenly, coat ballooning until he looked for all the world like he was landing. "Peter – Moxy – I owe these people a great deal. I care about them, do you understand that?" His head was bent. "I have a debt to pay." He looked up and held the other man's eyes. "I am not in the habit of begging. But I am," a pause, "_asking_ you to go down there and do the job you were trained to do, regardless of love, killing, or personal attachment."

They stayed there, still as statues and Meat held her breath. Then the seated figure nodded, slowly, and the kneeling figure rose, even more slowly. Fruvous stood as well, and made to go, paused, and said something she didn't hear. Khashoggi winced as though he'd been struck, and stepped backward. Fruvous said, "Andrei…" and then left. In the darkness of the curving stairwell, Meat shifted. The man's head snapped up and he said curtly, "You might as well come out. I thought there was someone there." Meat stood up and walked down the stairs. Khashoggi sighed. "So much for Bohemian stealth training."

She opened her mouth and said the first thing that came into her mind. "How dare you!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"How dare you threaten him with us like your personal army! How dare you take apart his mind like that and use it to force him to do what you want." She could feel tears threatening to burst over and she couldn't endure another bland comment about running mascara. "Do you recognize people? As individuals? Or are we all just toys for you to move around any way you like?"

"Meat Loaf," he began and, unusual for him, touched her arm. She pulled away, sick with the fog of prison memories.

"_Don't touch me_. Don't come near me." She swallowed. "I'm grateful you're helping, even if it is only through a sense of obligation, but please," she gasped, "don't talk to me unless it's important." She turned and ran from the room. And, once again, she leaned against the wall outside the door and put her hands over her mouth so that he wouldn't hear her weeping. Inside the room, Khashoggi moved woodenly, his slow mind only beginning to comprehend what his senses knew instantly. "I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind to prey at fortune," he murmured, resting his hands against the window-sill, as he had once rested them on the edge of the sink before spinning and hurling the glass at the wall in a vain effort to do something.

Ringing in his ears were silly, empty words from that silly boy from Stateside. "We used to talk about you as an angel, you know. I think it was because your office always used to send e-mails with a winged avatar in the corner. So in the mess and whatnot, you guys over in top headquarters were the Archangels. Whatever – no one said we were creative. KQ was God, and you were the angel with the flaming sword. The one who gives out justice. But, I mean. If justice has the flexibility for killing, doesn't it have the flexibility for love?"

Now Khashoggi stood and took a deep breath. There was work to be done. Always. He looked at his reflection in the dark window, backed by lights, and said harshly, "Impartial, detached justice? Huh. I challenge the mighty titan and his troubadours…Not, I think, the angel with the sword, but the angel who challenged the Almighty out of pride. The angel who failed. The angel who fell." He turned, his coat billowing, and walked out the other door.


	5. Chapter 5

**(A/N)**_ This chapter built itself from a number of sources, including my roommate, who has watched too many episodes of the American Idol auditions while I was in the room. The song is by Moxy Fruvous (translation mine) and most of the other stuff comes from discussion in our forum. Cheeky Fairy appears courtesy Tekya and the use of Freddie's wall is inspired by MissLoaf91. All the Bohemians you don't recognize were invented by me. Anything else belongs to the creators of this show. I promise, the next chapter will be more exciting and more, um, coherent. All right, my beauties…enjoy. _

"A glooming peace this morning with it brings," said Khashoggi, allowing himself a brief indulgence. He handed his colleague a cup of coffee. Aretha gave him a baleful glare, Big Macca a confused one.

"Hmm…" said Moxy, inhaling fumes. "_So_ much better than virtual reality." He looked at the other man. "Sorry, what?"

Khashoggi rubbed his forehead. "Never mind." He looked at Moxy. "Well?"

Moxy sighed. "Well, it looks like he did come over with a group. I'll have to go work on him some more to find out exactly where they are. I'd say south of London – somewhere they call the Devil's Punchbowl? Something like that, anyway."

Khashoggi was doing something with his clipboard. He looked up. "That area used to be called Guildford. I don't know about a punchbowl though." He touched the screen a few more times. The clipboard beeped. "Should we be worried about more of his friends coming here?"

"No, I don't think so. I'll double check that later today." There was a flash of revulsion in Moxy's eyes but he didn't say anything.

One of the doors opened. "Reeth? Macca? Where's Meat?"

"Who's asking?" said Meat Loaf, turning from the window. Like the others, she stared. Scaramouche was standing in the doorway in trousers and combat boots, Galileo's jacket pulled over her shoulders. Her hair was yanked back to show her face, chalky white and severe. Something of the adolescent awkwardness and flailing, indiscriminate rebellion was gone, and also something softer that had begun to creep into her movements and voice in this last year. Shifting under the stares, she shoved her hands deep in her pockets. "Meat and Macca, can you come in here, please? I need to talk to you." No one moved, and so she turned and walked into the next room.

Sharing a glance, the other two followed. She was sitting on the edge of the table when she entered, head bent over some papers. She looked up. "These were on the piano in the studio. I think he was going to arrange them next." She held them out.

"_The show must go on_," read Big Macca. "What's the tune? I mean, are we even going to - ?"

"That's what I was going to ask you," said this new Scaramouche tonelessly. "There are still three of us. We can't replace him, but we could still make music, maybe even with some other people. You know, keyboard and vocals. I think – I think he'd have liked that, yeah?"

Meat shifted uneasily. "Don't talk like that, Scara. He's not dead."

"Yet," said the girl. She shrugged, looking at her hands twisting together in her lap. "Fine, he'd like that. Whatever; it's the same thing at the moment. But do you want to?"

Big Macca blinked. "Yeah. Duh, Scara. Completely, totally, duh."

Meat grinned in spite of herself. "Scara, we're your band and we're behind you. 'Course we want to keep on rocking. What are you thinking?"

The girl's head jerked up and a number of emotions skidded across her face. She almost smiled. Then she unwound her hands and rested them flat on the table beside her. "Yeah? Right then. What do we gotta do?" They chatted logistics for almost an hour. It was almost like before, with those meetings that Galileo missed or couldn't be arsed to show up to. Finally, Scaramouche slid off the table and shrugged the jacket to sit more comfortably on her shoulders. "Let's do this." And when she walked out the door, Meat and Big Macca fell into step behind her, because they recognized responsibility when they saw it.

The sound of the door opening made all the Bohemians in the next room look up.

"Scara!" said Aretha, letting out a puff of air. "Thank God! What do you want me to do about all the people?"

"People?" said Scara.

"Yes, people. There are loads coming to the house; they want to know about Galileo and you and the band and all that. Well, some of them just want autographs or to buy stuff, but most of them are seriously worried."

Scara turned a vague face on Aretha. "Tell them," she began, then shrugged. "Tell them we're having auditions. This band will keep rocking, right." She was yelled into silence by the sound of cheering Bohemians. Behind her, Meat and Big Macca smiled. But Scara waited patiently until the noise had finally stopped; then she said, "Just today; whoever's in the front of the line gets to sing. We're starting in two hours. Tell them all the information's online."

"Tell them," Aretha echoed. "Aren't you…?"

A tiny smile brushed the corner of Scara's mouth. "No, I'm not going to tell them anything, Reeth. I've got an audition to organize, yeah."

Then she turned and was gone, the two other musicians following her. Aretha sighed explosively. "Balls," she said to nobody in particular. "Prince, get your ass over here; we're doing crowd control."

The auditions were in no way a pleasurable experience. Bad enough they were forced to try and replace not only a symbolically-charged boy, but someone who was genuinely talented. Bad enough you had to hear your own music sung over and over again, but the attitude was worse. They filed in like spectators at an execution with a certain macabre gloating over the loss of the Dreamer: I'm sorry he's gone, but maybe I can get something out of it.

Most of them sang _a cappella_ under Scara's formidable glare. Early on, she had tapped onto her keyboard, "_a cappella_, if it's necessary…it's never necessary," and smiled faintly at Meat, who had snorted and had to cough to cover it. And nearly all of the auditioners sang what songs were already available for consumption; a year after the Rhapsody, quite a few people could read music and almost all of them were comfortable with it. A few tribes here and there had begun to reconstruct their texts, if they had music attached. But after too many repeats, it just settled into the empty place in the heart like a sullen ache. Scara, taking refuge in the mute glare that had served her so well in school, thought that if one more person sang "Somebody to Love," she would dive across the table and kick them to death. Tact, what?

The end of the day brought a numb sort of happiness. I'm almost finished. When Moxy Fruvous walked in, she barely noticed him. "Next?" she said, vaguely.

A new file popped onto her computer. _Name: Moxy Fruvous. Age: 27_. She looked up. "Are you here to audition?"

He pushed the hair out of his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Is that all right?"

"I guess so. Why not?" She turned to look at the other two; they both shrugged.

"All right," said Scara, and dropped back into her standard speech. "We'd just like you to sing something for us. Just _a cappella_, but if you do keyboard, let us know. You can begin whenever you're ready."

The young man tucked his hands deep into his pockets, shut his eyes, and began to sing.

_Longue journee_

_Qui s'acheve dans une chamber foncee_

_J'entends au loin les sirenes_

_Qui comme une vague me tirent, m'amenent_

_Chez Morphee_

_Emerveille_

The band members exchanged looks. It was not only a good song, it was a _new_ song, delivered in a voice that was husky but true. And it sounded good, even if –

"But what the hell does that mean?" said Big Macca.

Fruvous flushed. "It's a text we had. It's in French; you know, one of the old languages before the cyber-lution, They used to speak it near where I'm from. It translates as, um, This is a long journey, which I make in a dark room. I can hear the sirens, and they pull me, carry me, like a wave to Morpheus, and I am filled with wonder." His smile was self-deprecating. "It's a lot better in French. Um. It's my band, actually: Moxy Fruvous. We've got a lot of their stuff, and our boss Linkin and I have been trying to transcribe it all."

"So you can read music?" said Scara.

"Yep."

"Uh-huh. Cool. Thanks."

He waved and walked out. The next in was a giggly teenager with pink stripes in her bleached hair. "Heya!" she said, her voice squeaking a little. "I'm Georgie and I'm going to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, because it is just am_az_ing!"

Scara let her go to the end of the first phrase, mostly because Big Macca was leaning on her. Then she said, "The operative word there, love, is _sing_. Get out."

---

She couldn't sleep. She didn't want to lie down on that mattress again, and so she didn't. Instead she pulled the tie out of her hair, shook it a few times, and let it hang in rats' tails over her shoulders. Then, with an almost ritualistic care, she dressed again in different clothes. Dress – the green one she'd made a month ago, swearing, stopping and starting on the sewing machine with Aretha and Madonna hanging over her and giving instructions. It wasn't perfect and the seams were a god-awful mess, but she'd made it and it had a little bit of her in it. Clothes were important; she'd always known that. You dressed how you felt, and clothing became almost…armor. Why else had she been wearing Gazz's jacket all day? She pulled on fishnets and then her boots. Elderly, ugly, scuffed, and totally indestructible. Galileo's jacket, smelling of cologne and soap and, faintly, of leather. She shouldn't be wearing it – it wasn't _hers_ and it didn't mean the same thing on her – but it felt good. Like having a layer of Gazz between her and the outside world; she'd gotten used to that feeling and lacking it left her hurt, bewildered, frightened. Scaramouche dug both hands into her hair, ruffled it vigorously, and then left the building, nearly tripping over Khashoggi on the way out. He growled at her; she hissed back, and then she was out in the streets with the night air fresh on her face. God, it felt good to be alone again.

She let her feet pick the direction, but she had to admit she wasn't entirely surprised to find that they lead her towards Logan Place. She walked fast, a little hunched over, hands dug deep into the pockets of the jacket. If any of the few people out on the streets to night noticed her, they didn't comment. She stopped at her unintentional destination and looked at the house. There, just a little above head level – well, hers, anyway – was her name, squeezed in among thousands of others. It was quite a monument. She reached out and put her hand on the wall, feeling the stone rough under her fingers. _This is real_, he'd said, reaching up to scribble "Galileo Figaro." _This is their monument, but I want it to be ours too, because there's a lot of bad stuff and a lot of hurting going on out there. This one is for rockers. Touch it, feel it, kiss it, because it's ours and it's real and we fought for it._

A lighter flared in the darkness around mid-leg level and one voice said, "Scara," as another, nearly overlapping, agreed, "Mouche."

The light glinted off tulle and wool and the matte of denim. "Heya," she said. "What are you two doing here?"

"Just out," said Cheeky Fairy defensively.

"You know, sitting," added Bowie. She held out the cigarette. Light caught on her silver rings. "You want?"

Scara had taken science; she knew what was in those things. But refusing would have been well rude, so she said a quiet good bye to a few more lung cells and took the cigarette, settling down on the other side of Fairy. "Thanks," she said, and inhaled.

Bowie glanced at her out of large eyes in an androdynous face that was, after the fashion of Bohemians, young and old at the same time. "No prob," she said, taking her fag back and blowing smoke up to the sky. Scara had a feeling that the other girl knew perfectly well that she, Scara, didn't smoke, and that her politeness had been registered and appreciated.

Fairy was curled up next to Bowie, but now she stretched and, after taking a drag, said, "We should light a candle, you know?"

"Maybe," said Scara, made oddly languid by the night air.

"I got a candle," the girl persisted. "And Bowie got a lighter, right?" Bowie flipped it out of her sleeve and handed it to Fairy, who passed it to Scara. "You gotta do it."

"Right then," said Scara. She flicked the lighter open and put a bit of flame to the candle in front of her. Cheeky Fairy and Bowie leaned in, their fine-boned faces exaggerated by the shadows. "What now?"

"We just watch it burn," said Bowie softly. She ran her index finger through the flame. "Fire's fun," she added. She was a terse girl with a sort of held-in quietness that suggested she was really waiting for the moment to let all hell break loose. They still talked about when the last time she'd lost her temper. Prince still had the scars. She and Fairy together formed one being as incomprehensible as the sum of its parts with an uncanny interest in graffiti and fire.

"Hmph," said Scara, leaning her head against the wall and lazily concentrating on the flickering point of light. Bowie stretched out, lying in a protective half-circle around the candle and lit another cigarette. Fairy curled up in a little ball like a dog and, to all intents and purposes, went to sleep. Bowie dozed, her fag falling from her hand. And Scaramouche, sitting under Freddie Mercury's wall with two uncanny children and a small candle, kept a vigil for reasons she didn't want to understand. It was enough that she did it.

--

The lights in the basement clicked on and Ricky Gardener jumped. "Sweet Jesus!"

"If I were you," said Commander Khashoggi, "I would wait for divine intervention. Commander will do."

"What are you doing here?" said Gardener.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" said Khashoggi, setting the recording device on the table and walking over the look down at the young man. "I'm going to verify some of the answers you gave my colleague."

Gardener went white. "I'm telling the truth! Why don't you believe me?"

"I make it a point never to believe anything the first time I hear it," said Khashoggi. It was almost too easy, with the right lighting and the right positioning. You didn't even need guards – in fact, it was better if you didn't have them. Then there were no witnesses and you could do whatever you wanted. He was even tall; it was all laughably simple to terrorize one nervous, brainwashed child. The boy already had the anonymity of a prisoner after two days of sitting. No one had even hit him, for Christ's sake. He'd just been asked a few questions, and already he looked apathetic, broken. Not like the past, he thought ruefully. Once his job had been…_challenging_. The Bohemians made good enemies. Scaramouche had even bitten him whilst being interrogated.

He proceeded to go through the answers the boy had given Moxy, watching him. The prisoner was barely a person anymore – a faceless creature who had, somewhere, information. It was all a matter of control and having the delicate, meticulous skill to turn over every scrap of knowledge in the boy's head. People said the Secret Police could probe your thoughts. They could, actually, but most of the time it wasn't worth it. Not when they could just be patient. It was a game: who could hold out longer. And the winner was almost always Khashoggi. There was one girl who had kept him talking so long that he'd lost interest, but she was the only one. The only one…He pulled away from that thought quickly and focused all his attention on the boy in front of him, probing, questioning. It was a well-practised skill and he slipped into the old mindset oh so easily.

And yet…it was different, just a little, because he suddenly had to exercise restraint. Meat Loaf had punched him, long ago, and yelled at him. And he had looked at her face covered in melting mascara, and made a sudden, instinctive agreement with himself. _No more_. Not to say she had redeemed him exactly – he had done that on his own. But even the clean excitement of ultimate control tasted rotten after a while, and in prison, with three cracked ribs and a broken nose, he had realized that perhaps there were subtler ways to make one's point. However therapeutic he found violence, it lacked a certain amount of…style. So now he set his mind to getting information without actually hitting the boy. The suspense was almost more effective than broken bones because there was always the chance that broken bones were somewhere in the future. And, as he had already observed, Ricky Gardener didn't need much encouragement to crack…

---

Commander Khashoggi was indeed a universal phobia and so when he materialized out of the shadows and said, "Fruvous, I need you," eight of the nine Bohemians, occupied with a busy game of strip poker, jumped. The ninth stood up and said, "Sorry guys."

" 'S'all right," said Prince. "You're winning anyway."

"Yeah, man – you happy because you get to stop on a streak, huh?" said Big Macca. "I want my shirt back."

"Well maybe I don't wanna give it back to you," said Fruvous, grinning. "Maybe I like looking at you without."

"You and a million other chicks," said the half-naked Bohemian and smirked. "Get in line, mate."

Fruvous laughed, and there was some good-natured whistling. Someone slapped his back as he stood up and moved away from the table. In another room, he hooked a chair over to him and sat on it, opening his personal computer and scanning the file that popped up. "Well?"

Khashoggi leaned back in his own chair and said, "It's the Devil's Punchbowl, mid-south on the urban belt. Should take us half an hour to get there. There's some old housing developments along there, and the remains of a school, I think." Fruvous scrolled down the page.

"What're the dates on the buildings? 1902? 1985? Dear Lord, that's old; it's not still running, is it?"

"No."

"So what are you planning?"

"The usual. They'll be in the main hall; I want enough people to surround the place. Then we'll let in the little ones to scout and then we'll go in, round the lot up, and get them back to our cells. Call Backstreet for ammo and minibuses; we'll need three. No, four." He steepled his fingers. "I want you and Prince and Bob and the regrettably stupid but inarguably big Sir Paul McCartney. Also Mick and Backstreet for the vans. And," he shut his eyes, running through the list of Bohemians. "The Church girl in leather and the little one with good aim; Madonna, that's it. Meat Loaf. Who else? The pyromaniac."

"Bowie?"

"Yes." That was eleven. "And…"

"Scaramouche?"

"Dear Lord, no."

"Sir?"

Khashoggi opened his eyes. "She kills with looks, Fruvous."

"I should think that would be extraordinarily useful," said a deadpan Moxy in his best Khashoggi voice.

The Commander raised an eyebrow and chose not to acknowledge the fact that he was being mocked. "Not," he said prosaically, "when she is likely to kill us before she gets to them."

"Ah. Good point, sir."

Khashoggi pondered. "Froggie," he said suddenly. "I want Froggie."

"But he's - "

"Annoying as hell? Most people are. But he's coming with us."


	6. Chapter 6

**(A/N)** _Nervous giggle I know, I know, I really owe you rockers another chapter. I'm rather bizarrely gratified that so many people want updates for this; I mean, I like it, but I'm a little partial. And don't worry – the next few chapters will come in a more timely manner (I really hope – I seem to have sold my soul to the theatre department for this term, but…it's almost done). Filming done on location at the Royal School, Haslemere in Surrey. Thanks to them for donating the setting. Some of it's mine; most of it isn't. Anyway, you lot are the best, and I hope you like this chapter – I've never written a real fight scene before, so I'm not sure about it. I just watched movies and hoped I was doing it right. (Oh, and Happy Birthday, soonish, to **Tekya Sugar Faerie**, who said she had one coming up. Hang in there, m'dear!) _

The next day was given over to logistics. Khashoggi was everywhere, talking ammunition with Mick and vans with Backstreet and tactics with his elite force of hardened Bohemians. They were mostly Heartbreak veterans, dangerous and ratty around the edges. Moxy was impressed in spite of himself to see them all mobilize in their own ways.

The morning after that, standing near Liberty's with the vans ready to go, it was as though they had become, somehow, Khashoggi's army. Big Macca and Mick grappled under the old Carnaby street sign, mostly in play, though Moxy noticed that Mick landed a few of his kicks. Madonna stretched like a sleek ginger cat, the muscles on her bare arms gilded by early morning sunlight. Charlotte, impervious in PVC, swung her laser pistol up into aim position, squinting at one of the buildings across the street. Then she spun it round her finger with the lazy grace of a crack shot and slid the weapon back into its holster. She sent a wry glance over at Khashoggi as she settled the belt. Perhaps she appreciated the irony that the former Commander was now arming his former enemies? The two little ones, Bowie and Cheeky Fairy, were a little off to the side. Fairy giggled and swung around on the wrought iron sculpture (entrance to, Khashoggi and Pop assured them, more tunnels like the one which had housed the Heartbreak), a graceful gymnast. Bowie lounged and chain-smoked, her silver-ringed hands perfectly still.

Meat and Prince and Bob shared a carafe of coffee and talked quietly. Remembering, perhaps, the Heartbreak as it had been, when they defended instead of attacked. Of the defiant faces that had charged Wembley during the Rhapsody, these were the three that had changed the least: bellicose Prince, solid Bob, active Meat. They had retained that look of suffering and intense living that the Heartbreak conditioned and Moxy, who had been a Bohemian for a short time and a prison guard for a long one, knew the various faces Bohemians wore. His heart went out to these three.

Mick had his head in the bonnet of one of their minibuses, rooting around with the engine. Which meant they were only missing one. Where was –

"Anything I can do to help?" Moxy looked at the enthusiastic speaker. He was a short, wiry young man: all knobbly elbows and knees, with sallow skin and thinning hair. He affected large motorcycle glasses and spoke in a gravelly bass. Moxy was thoroughly impressed with whoever had dubbed him Froggie after the infamous Crazy Frog of the early twenty-first century. It had been a master job in naming.

"No, not yet," said Moxy. Mick pulled his head out of the vehicle and said, "All clear, boss."

Khashoggi didn't even have to say anything. They loaded into the mini-buses (there had been a shortage in the garage, and there were only two now) without further instruction. Khashoggi, Mick, Froggie, Moxy and the two little ones in the first bus; Backstreet and the Old Guard in the second. It was a short ride, one that didn't allow for much rumination or nerves. Moxy drove, watching the road and wishing the cyber-lution had covered which side of the road one used on various sub-continents. Not, of course, that there were many things on the Urban Belt that would fight with a mini-bus, especially not one Cheeky Fairy had drawn an impromptu mural on – "And when," Backstreet had growled, "did she get into the garage?" At least, Moxy thought, everyone knew this minibus was somehow connected with the Dreamer and would, as such, excuse any bad driving.

"Turn here," said Khashoggi, pointing to a flashing exit sigh ahead. Moxy turned off of the Urban Belt, and then they were into smaller back roads. The intercom fluttered static of Backstreet swearing – Backstreet liked cars, especially cars that went _really fast_, and the side effect was that he hated back roads where you couldn't go fast – although he was soon cut off by other voices. Moxy thought he heard Meat's raised in shrill annoyance. The complaining stopped. It was a pretty drive, Moxy thought. _Pretty enough to die at the end of it_? It was always a risk you faced going into combat, he thought. There was always the slightest chance that you might not come out of it again. _Momento mori_, they used to call it: a reminder of death.

On Khashoggi's instructions, he turned at a few more exits, and the roads got a little smaller each time. Then they went by a train station and, at a small green enclosed by glass, made a right. "Straight up that hill," said Khashoggi. "Cut the engine and run on electricity; we want to be quiet." The road did go straight up a hill, and what a hill…no child of Planet Mall could have imagined it by themselves; they simply didn't have enough exposure to the real outside world.

It was a narrow road, sunk into the hill itself and lined with the roots of ancient trees, visible in high banks from the deep road. There was a lot of green, Moxy thought. It was still unusual, seeing that much plant growth. The road twisted through patches of sun and shadow. If he hadn't been driving towards danger, he'd have thought it quite pretty. The road twisted around, back on itself, then showed, on the right, a large square blue sign with a picture of a crown and words that had been rubbed off. They caught a glance through the trees of a building built in the 1960s, when they were still using light brown brick instead of glass and plastic. It looked like a box and Moxy, who enjoyed architecture, winced. A little further on – more flashes of box buildings, and then a right turn and another blue sign. Across the road from the sign was a small paved area for cars and hover-bikes, a fence, and then empty park land half obscured by more trees. On the left, the Devil's Punchbowl; on the right, the school where the Yes-things were hiding. He stopped in the car park and waited for the second bus.

Khashoggi swung out of the bus and nodded. The little group, well-drilled, moved off as they'd been told. The two little ones first, with Meat, Charlotte, and Madonna behind them, covering the girls with their guns. Then a count of sixty later, Moxy and Froggie, and then at the back the big men: Macca, Prince, Bob, Backstreet, and Mick. And Commander Khashoggi, of course. They didn't know what the visibility was like, so they sneaked – no other word for it, thought Moxy, beside a furiously-wiggling Froggie – through the underbrush. Past an old cottage, past another box building (this time red brick, not that it was much better), and then up to the main building, elegant dark brown stone blocks, which announced it was Stoatley Hall, 1902. It was attractive, at least. Also several stories high. Moxy's heart sank a little. It was going to take forever to do their recon.

Khashoggi's voice spoke into their two-way body mics. "All of you, in. Girls take the first floor, boys the second. And _stay_ on your floor unless you're above them. We'll drive them down. And turn the mics off after this; we don't want their transceivers picking anything up." It was a stupid thing to do, and the policemen, used to depending on communication, were especially loath to do away with it. But…all's fair, Khashoggi had scowled, in love and war. Fair, and usually necessary.

Moxy screwed up his face and slid the chip in his ear to the _off_ position. Then Fairy had scrambled out of her bush and was working on the big front doors. Bowie oiled the hinges and then both girls had slipped inside. Meat, from her position, waited until Charlotte's sleek back moved, and followed the two women through the silent doors. It was a very old building; that was the first thing she noticed about it. Charlotte and Madonna exchanged looks; there were two doors inside and it was hard to tell where the girls had gone. Meat thought of the shape of the building and gestured left; there was a lot more of it that way than there was on the right. They moved through a small tiled entrance-hall, then onto ancient, dusty carpet. It took prints, but Meat didn't think they could do much about that. It became a litany of progress: down a corridor, peeking into a small pantry full of old appliances and dust. Then through one set of swinging doors, past a flight of stairs, into the old kitchens. Nothing there but more old machinery. Madonna rifled a few drawers and helped herself to some knives. She offered then to Charlotte, who grinned and patted her laser; and Meat, who simply shook her head She heard Brit's voice echo in her head, _only Madsy's got the balls for knives_. They went out through the kitchens into a cafeteria with a few rickety plastic tables standing out, waiting for the Year Sevens and bossy Upper Sixths who would never come again. They left the cafeteria by its real doors and investigated the classrooms along the hall. They found footprints in one room full of very old computer equipment, but the prints were so small they realized it must have been Bowie who left them, and not any renegade Yes-things. "Like they'd be able to use that equipment, anyway," hissed Charlotte. "Too stupid, the cyber-buggers."

Eventually they got back to the entrance hall and went left instead of right. This time they went through the other set of swinging doors and found themselves in even more grandeur. It was a large room with a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace at one end, the walls wood-paneled and the leaded windows facing out to the drive tall and pointed at the top. There was a screen in the corner next to the fireplace, concealing a very old piano; and pictures on the walls. Also a staircase, curving down from the gallery above, and three doors. Small footprints in the dust suggested that Bowie and Fairy had been here and gone upstairs. Meat wished she could follow them, not because they couldn't take care of themselves, but because the waiting was worse; she knew she was getting more and more jumpy as the minutes passed, afraid that something was going to burst out at her from behind the next door.

Charlotte didn't appear to be having the same problem. She kicked open the first door, gun up. Nothing there but books and a few small tables and chairs; it had once been a very pretty room, probably. The second room was nearly empty, and the third room also. Charlotte shrugged, and as they came out, they heard somebody – a child, or a very young girl – scream upstairs, and then the sound of bullets and lasers. Meat had dived forward before she realized she had. It was something about that scream… "Meat," said Charlotte in her ear, "don't be an idiot, yeah?" and let her go. "He said to stay here, and we bloody well will."

Meat nodded, rubbing her arm. "Sorry, Lotte. I couldn't…"

Madonna slung an arm around Meat's shoulders. "I know what you mean, love."

"Oi, get down!" Big Macca appeared on the landing. His arm moved and a figure in worn black plastic tumbled over the balcony rail. "Just hang in there," he called down to the girls, then ran back through the door towards the sound of the guns. Madonna ran over to the fallen body and ascertained that it was, in fact, dead. Then they had to wait. Again.

It was worse this time, hearing the battle upstairs. They'd all seen people die, people they loved, people they needed, people who supported them. Each one was thinking, _who's next? Who'll be the body we take back this time? Prince or Bob? Big Macca?_ Meat, running her hand along the scrollwork on the screen, wondered about the new ones as well. Moxy was too young to be dead; too eager and thirsting for music. And Khashoggi…always Khashoggi followed by that mental ellipsis. Always Khashoggi, despite…everything. She sniffed. _Right. Get yourself together, my girl_.

There was a tremendous crash, and two bodies came flying over the upper banister, yelling. It was Bowie, her arms wrapped around a Yes-thing twice her size. She was fighting hard though, with teeth and knees and thumbs, inflicting pain in a way only Bowie could do. Cheeky Fairy, on the second floor, was screaming like a fire-whistle; a high, keening noise. They rolled over, too fast even for Charlotte to shoot, though she had her laser pistol up and aimed. "Oh, my God," said Madonna, biting down hard on her sleeve. "Oh, my dear, sweet God. She's gonna get killed!" The Yes-thing had his hands in Bowie's hair now, and she was screaming, and though they still flailed and rolled, it was clear who was winning.

Then from above, a crisp voice snapped, "Out of the way, you stupid girl," and Meat looked up to see Khashoggi push his coat back. She'd thought that he was unarmed except for the pistol he always carried. But it turned out not; under his jacket he had – dear God! – a double belt of three knives on each side. In a fluid movement he drew one and threw it. The knife arced down through the sunbeams, flashing fire into their eyes, and hit the Yes-thing in the back with an audible _thump_. Cheeky Fairy squeaked. "Shit!" said Madonna, staring at the Commander. And then, slowly, the Yes-thing rose into the air, and fell again as Bowie crawled out from underneath the body. She raised herself on her elbows and looked at up Khashoggi.

"Hey man," she said, voice even huskier than usual. "What the fuck d'you think you're doing?"

"We call it fighting, Miss Bowie," said Khashoggi. "Hang onto that knife."

Bowie chuckled, a warm and completely uncharacteristic sound. "Right then. Go get some more of those bastards for me." Khashoggi nodded, turned, and shot the closest Yes-thing through the chest.

"Partay!" Madonna yelled. The fighting had moved out onto the balcony and Charlotte shifted sideways, took aim, and began picking off black shapes. Soon enough, they were down the stairs or jumping off the balcony. Bowie, still laying in the ground, was agile enough to dodge, though it looked like she couldn't get up. She began stabbing anything within her reach that moved. Meat stood in front of the third door, guarding one convenient exit from the room. She forced herself to be mechanical, try not to think, try not to remember the other associations she had with lasers.

"You holding out all right?" The Statesman was beside her. "How's the ammo?"

"Fine." She shook her hair out of her face. "Lucky we brought the close range guns."

"That's the Commander for you," said Fruvous shortly. "There were more than we thought upstairs, though."

"Moxy!" She grabbed his arm and ducked. A shot ricocheted off the fireplace and she wondered, ridiculously, if the piano was all right. "Where are the boys? Macca and Prince and Bob and that lot?"

"They took the basement," he said, and she could see the worry in his face. "They're still down there."

"Shit."

"Yeah, kind of. Here." He pushed a plastic bottle into her hand, hugged her one armed, dropping a kiss on her forehead. She tilted her face upwards and kissed his mouth, laughing a little. When she stopped, he grinned and drawled, "Well, thanks…I feel better all ready. Hang in there, love." She turned the bottle over and grinned. Vodka. Like Brit and Galileo, Moxy Fruvous seemed to have an instinctual understanding of what other people needed. Or perhaps it was just luck, she thought, watching him kneel beside Madonna with another bottle. Luck and good nature. _How did that one ever end up a policeman? He's too nice for it._ The alcohol fizzed in her stomach, and she pushed the gun into her waistband to grapple with the next man.

Thirty seconds later she regretted it. He wasn't huge, like Bowie's, but just – quick. Very quick. And she was tired, or not as fast as she once might have been (did it matter which, really?). He got his hands around her neck, and she kicked, pushing him off, biting at the web between his thumb and forefinger. He swore at her and she tasted blood – _Not my own; what a nice change_ – before letting go and clawing at his face. He backhanded her, hard enough to knock her teeth together. She felt the skin on her cheekbone split. _Oh, goody. Another scar_. She wished, desperately, for Scaramouche's steel-tipped boots, but all she had were her own; heavy enough in their own way, but not made for defense. She kicked, punched, pushed, remembering Brit's insistence that they all learn some kind of basic self-defense. She'd been good at it, once. Now, perhaps not so much. It would have been better if he weren't so damn _fast_. She forced him backwards across the floor, away from the door, pressing her attack, but exactly where they were, she didn't know. He managed to give her a sudden jab in the solar plexus and she stumbled forward and coughed, dizzy with pain. Then he got in a good, solid slug across the kidneys and she fell onto her knees retching – this bastard knew what he was up to.

"You little _bitch_," he ground out, pushing her onto her back and wrapping both hands around her neck. He was heavy and smelled of stale sweat. He was leaning partway across her chest and that only made it harder to breath. Panic rose with memories…Meat flung an arm sideways, scrabbling on the ground in an attempt to pull herself along the floor to safety or something. Her fingers stung, briefly, and black spots began to cover her vision. _Not good_. She ran slick fingers along the new surface she'd found, barely daring to hope. They couldn't have moved that far, but maybe…maybe…_Yes_! Her fingers closed on the hilt of Khashoggi's knife, and, as the world retreated into a glaring, angry face, she dragged her right arm up and brought the knife down on his back. She could only hope the blade was the right way. His hands tightened and her heart-beat pounded in her ears. _Nice try, baby. Another one bites the dust_. She'd gambled and lost.

There was a soundless explosion from somewhere, and the man flew up. "Is she all right?"

"She better be alive, otherwise I'm gonna kill her." Charlotte?

"Well, better drag her – oh, holy fucking _shit_!" Madonna's voice was lost in the sound of more combat. Meat opened her eyes and, because of her angle, managed to see the whole thing from a more or less perfect view. Eight more Yes-things came running through the swinging doors, obviously looking for a way out – why didn't they use the front door? she wondered, and then remembered that the plan had been to block it with something – and not expecting to run smack into another lot of Bohemians. Behind them she could see the guys, smug and all upright. Madonna and Charlotte began shooting. The body was still over her legs; she was trying to move when another body landed on the first one and she discovered she couldn't move after all. Then Charlotte's legs disappeared and somebody kicked her left temple. She nearly passed out.

Much later, she heard someone exclaim, "Jesus _Christ_, he's got a knife in his back! Who carries _those_?" Meat could feel her mouth pull towards a smile instinctively. That had to be Big Macca.

"I never put her down for a knife girl…"

"Mine, Mr. McCartney. Thank you." There was a rustle beside her, then a hand lifted her wrist. He dropped it, touched her throat very gently, tracing the red marks that must be showing. She shivered. If he noticed, he didn't say anything. Fingers brushed her forehead, feather-light and very gentle, lifting her hair away from her face. As they touched the bruise, she twitched again. His fingers moved down across her face, tilting it from side to side, tracing the lines of cheekbones, nose, eye-sockets. She was tired, injured, probably bleeding and certainly bruised, but it still felt good. That light brush of fingers soothed the memories that crowded her mind. _How did he know that's the only kind of touching I could stand right now? How the hell did he know to do that? _Finally his fingers slipped away with one mocking, lingering caress over her lips. _Bastard_, she thought. _He's doing this because he knows I'm awake, and knows I know they're there and can't just sit up_. "No concussion; she'll be fine," said Khashoggi, and she heard him stand, move away.

"Meat?" Someone else was leaning over her now. "Hey, girl. You alive?" It took a lot of work, but she opened her eyes.

"Bob," she said, and rolled over, and was sick. Too many prison memories; too many life memories.

"Aww, babe." He rubbed her back. "You're gonna be fine."

"Who else?"

"Don't look at me like that," he said, helping her up. "Nobody's dead. Mostly bruises; Bowie's got a broken ankle." She could see, in the parking lot, a figure in a gray coat carrying a much smaller shape. "Prince's done something to his shoulder, the stupid sod, and Lotte's got a concussion. She's out cold." Heading for the door, she saw Big Macca half-carrying Madonna, who leaned against him. Moxy and Backstreet carried a stretcher. The floor of the hall was covered in bodies, mostly young, mostly underfed, mostly male. The bodies made her feel sick again, and she hurried out.

---

The ride back was quiet. The guys were in van one with Khashoggi and Moxy had been delegated to van two with the "hospital." As the first van pulled away, Moxy looked about, counted, and realized they had somehow misplaced Froggie. His first thought was annoyance – how can you get lost in one building, you stupid little idiot – and the second was worry – I hope he didn't get himself killed. With a sigh, Moxy went back into the building through the ground level windows on the side of the building they'd been using as doors. He forced himself to go back into the main hall and there, he did find Froggie. The young man was kneeling on the floor by the old piano, doing something to the legs. "Froggie?" said Moxy guardedly. He was not in a good mood right now.

"Hey!" said Froggy. "So, guess what? This piano's really old! And it didn't really get hit in all the shooting; all right, except for a little bit right here, but I bet Pop or somebody can fix that. There's somebody at Liberty's who can fix stuff like this, right? Or is at least good with wood or something, right? Anyway, I was thinking we should take it back to London because, I mean, it's a really nice piano and I know that the Dreamer wanted another one and I thought…" The flow of words slowed abruptly, and Froggie said, "Oh, right." He still looked excited, though. Hyper expectant. "Can we take the piano though? Please?"

Moxy ran a hand through his hair forcing himself to be patient. Froggie's thought processes required a…different way of thinking about things. "No, not this time Froggie. We've got the sick people. And we don't have room for a piano." He held up his hand before the other man started talking again. "But maybe we'll come back for it soon, all right? Come on, we need to go."

Meat, with a chunk of someone's shirt wrapped around her cut fingers, was driving. Moxy sat in the back patting Charlotte while she was sick and trying to keep her from passing out again when she wasn't. Fairy lay curled up on one of the seats with her head in Madonna's lap and Bowie sat in the back seat with her leg up on the seat.

"How are you holding out?" asked Madonna, glancing over at Fruvous.

"And stop hovering," Charlotte snapped. "I'm not going to pass out again."

"Come on, Lotte." Madonna poked the other girl with her free hand. "Give the kid a break; he hasn't been a Boho for very long. You all right?"

"Yeah," he said. "How can you tell?"

"You wouldn't be so worried about all this shit if you'd been living underground for longer," said Madonna with a crooked grin. "You're too nice."

"Oh." He couldn't really think of anything else to say.

Meat snatched a quick look away from the road. "Madsy, are you flirting with the kid?"

"You know," said Madonna, running one hand along Moxy's shoulder, "I kind of think I am. He's cute."

"More'n cute, Madsy," said Meat conversationally. "That one's well fit."

"Oi, what about me, huh?"

"Well, if you promise not to puke on us, you can play too, babe," said Madonna, hugging Charlotte.

Moxy leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. "Aww, he's shy!" Charlotte snickered.

"No, I'm fucking tired." He opened one eye. "You two are clearly indefatigable."

"You sound," said Meat severely, "like Commander Khashoggi. That's definitely a sign of insanity."

"Hey, move over, love," Madonna shifted Cheeky Fairy sideways and swung her legs onto Charlotte's lap, "And you, Stateboy, find us tonight at Liberty's. We'll give you a proper Heartbreak welcome. What do you think, girls?"

"Sure," said Charlotte.

"I'll come," said Meat, and winked at him in the rear-view mirror.


	7. Chapter 7

Many things wound themselves up as Khashoggi's team recovered. The Band rehearsed. The structure Galileo had created was tight enough to outlive its founder, but loose enough to allow a new singer, talented in his own way. Fruvous fit in well enough, although every player was severely conscious that it wasn't the same Band and wasn't quite the same music.

The first night after they had returned from Guildford, Big Macca broke open his secret alcohol store – and still – and threw an impromptu party.

The second night, Khashoggi went to the arms storage room. He found Bowie, sitting near the door to the store room, the faint glow of her cigarette reflecting in her eyes. She had her leg up on a chair. "Hey, man," she said.

"Hey, little girl," said Khashoggi. He looked down at her.

She held up her cigarette. "You want?" He took it and held the smoke in his lungs before blowing it out slowly. "What're you doing here?"

"Tying up loose ends," Khashoggi answered, returning her cigarette.

"Thought you might be." She put up one hand and touched his sleeve. "I owe you man, big time."

"Only doing my job."

"Little more than that," said Bowie, with the strange smile that, from her, passed for humour. "I don't like guys as a rule, ya know, but…" Khashoggi leaned forward, took her face in both hands, and kissed her. When they stopped, Bowie smiled. "Thanks, man. Really." She traced the scar on his left cheek. "I know you, 'cause you think like me. So, thanks. Thanks for all that. And go tie up the loose ends."

"You're welcome," said Commander Khashoggi. Then he walked into the arms store room and walked out with a silencer on his pistol. Then he went down a few more corridors and let himself into the basement prison for the last time. He didn't bother turning on the lights, only said in his silky voice, "Goodbye, Mr. Gardener," and aimed.

Scaramouche, who'd taken to sorting old literature texts to keep herself from thinking, found one remnant in which a character announced that ideas were the important thing and couldn't die, but that she (the speaker) missed the man who'd created and embodied an idea. Although the man in this case had more in common with Khashoggi than Gazz, it was still true: ideas might be bullet-proof, but men were not. And she, selfish girl, wanted the man back. Scara put her head down on the table and cried. Again.

---

"And stay the _fuck_ away from my stuff, y'hear me?"

"What's all that?" Charlotte leaned through one of the windows to the atrium. It was mostly full of Bohemians; they tended to congregate in the same place out of habit. Meat Loaf's shrill voice echoed down from one of the upstairs rooms.

"Meat's gone stroppy," said Scara, who was lying sideways in a wing chair buried in a pile of comic books. She stretched. A few books slithered to the ground. "Macca's been doing something to her junk; dunno what. Just messing, probably." She glared at the door. "Wish they'd shut up, actually."

"Idiot," said Madonna affectionately.

Big Macca clattered down the stairs and into the atrium. "That girl," he announced, "needs to get _laid_."

"She did," said Madonna. Charlotte smirked.

"What?" Macca's eyes took in both girls and the faint flush that skated across Moxy Fruvous's face. "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh…where was I, huh?"

"Passed out in the atrium, loser." Charlotte flicked a gum-wrapper at the big man.

"Whatever. How was it?" Big Macca transferred his attention to Moxy.

He shrugged. "We missed you, Paul."

"Like hell you did." He paused, looking at the three of them. "Really? Well, _shit_." He glanced at the closed door. "Then it needs to matter." He slapped Moxy on the shoulder. "No offence, mind."

"None taken."

Then Macca asked for the details, and they all started laughing. Scara, who'd missed the orgy to curl up on the mattress for a few hours, rolled her eyes and opened her book. It was old, a bit of a mess, and hard to read because bits were missing, but surprisingly engrossing. Also familiar in a weird way; she wondered if blowing up buildings would have stopped Killer Queen.

In the her room, Meat glowered and sorted her CD collection, most of which was scattered over the carpet. Commander Khashoggi, the absolute _last_ person she wanted to see, walked in the doors and put his foot right on top of a tilting CD tower. It slipped, and so did the dignified commander. Unfortunately, he didn't actually fall over. Pity, that. "For God's sake, woman," said Khashoggi, catching himself as though nothing had happened. "Would a little tidiness be too much to ask?"

"Hey, you've got eyes," said Meat. "Use them."

"I shouldn't have to watch every footstep indoors. Christ." He looked around the room, taking in empty bottles piled crazily on the windowsill, plates on the tables, and the CD collection. "Can't you keep anything _clean_?"

"Look, I keep my stuff the way I like it."

"You keep this room the way _animals_ like it."

"Now, wait just a second." Meat rose and turned, advancing on the man. "Nobody asked you."

"What on earth do you mean? I live here."

"With other people. And not in this room. What you want doesn't always have to be the rules." She tossed her hair out of her face. "Never mind that; what do you want? Get it over with and get out."

"I was looking for Sir Paul McCartney," said Khashoggi, hanging onto his temper with an effort. This was the last thing he needed right now. "I thought he was in here," he added. "I wouldn't have come, otherwise."

"Avoiding me?"

"None of your business, princess."

"Princess? Now, just hang on just a minute." She grabbed his arm. "Since you're here, you can explain why you took it upon yourself to shoot that boy in the basement."

Khashoggi blinked. Raised his free hand to his forehead. "_Christ_. Not now, Meat."

"Don't patronize me." Her voice was hard, angry. "Don't act like I'm this nervous little girl who can be put off with a pat on the head and a glass of vodka, all right? I'm a real person, and we had an agreement."

"Forgive me, I don't remember." He stood very still, courteous under her grasp.

"Well, we might not have had anything in words, but we sure as hell never agreed that Ricky was going to get killed too."

"We had to do something with him," snapped Khashoggi. "What did you have in mind? Feeding him bread and water until he expired from a natural death? You didn't, if I recall, have any problems shooting his friends in Guildford."

"You can't just shoot a man in the cellar!"

"Really? Would you prefer I'd taken him out back? Down into the tunnels?"

"You should have at least _talked_ to someone!"

"I made a decision," said Khashoggi. His voice was going ragged around the edges. "And I dealt with it. It's none of your business. I deal with security issues as I see fit and you fuck the brains out of my assistant. That's how it works, I believe."

She flushed scarlet. "We are not a dictatorship," said Meat, her voice hard. "We are a team. We work together, if that means anything to you. And," she let go of his arm with a push and strode across the room. "You know what? Why am I even bothering to explain this? You're not one of us _any_way!"

"What?"

"You're a member of the Secret Police for God's sake!" Meat yelled. "And don't you _dare_ suggest that all I do is sleep around, because you know damn well that's not true."

Khashoggi took a deep breath. "Your entertainment choices are, in any case, irrelevant. Now if you're quite finished –?"

"Stop _doing_ that!"

"Doing _what_?" Khashoggi's hands balled into fists and, with an effort, he unclenched them. It wasn't worth losing his temper over. If he kept telling himself that, maybe he'd believe it.

"Making those bland comments." Meat was in front of him again, and poked him in the chest. "Pretending you're not a real person." Khashoggi said nothing although his hands curled again. _Don't hit the girl. Don't hit the girl_. "Real people talk to each other, something that you seem _completely_ incapable of doing, so…so…Talk to me, for God's sake! You sure as hell know every single thing that's happened to me – how about some payback? Why shoot that kid? Why are you looking for Paul? Anything. Just goddamn talk! Prove to me you're a bloody human being!"

Anybody could lose their temper. It was easy enough to do; just let go of a lifetime's restraint and yell all the things that boiled just under the surface. Khashoggi's theory had always been that temper was self-indulgent and stupid, but he realized now that there were times when you needed to let out all the things you'd been thinking and feeling, especially regarding one person in particular. And that sometimes, you didn't get a choice. He felt something in his chest snap then, and grabbed her shoulders, surfing on a wave of fiery anger. "Of course I'm not a real person, you stupid girl; I'm the opposite. I'm a _policeman_!" He forced her backwards, speaking low. "We're trained to be two things at once: we go through life like the rest of you do, but at the same time, we notice _everything_. We look at things, we take notes, we pay attention to little ticks when people speak. We're trained to know people. Sure we interrogate you," he grabbed her chin and forced it up, "but we don't _have_ to. Because a good cop knows who he's dealing with, and knows exactly what the suspect is going to say next."

"Get your hands off me!" It was an automatic squeal. Meat struggled, then looked at him directly. "And you're a good cop, is that it?"

"I'm not good," he gave her a little shake. "I'm the best. I am the best cop Killer Queen could train, and that makes me the best goddamn cop you people are ever, ever going to see."

"Oh, and I'm _so_ scared. Do you suddenly know how my brain works?" In her own way, she was near as arrogant as he was, he realized. It surprised him. "Do you think you know _me_, Andrei Khashoggi?"

He grabbed her wrists, holding them together and pinning them behind her. One push sent her stumbling and her back hit the wall. Khashoggi leaned forward and she glared up at him. "Yes, of course I do. I know why you're angry right now."

"And why's that?"

"You're not getting what you want." His free hand tapped her nose and she tried to kick him, only to discover that she couldn't move. "And the princess _always_ get what she wants."

"How's that, then?"

"Simple. Miss Loaf, consort to the captain – no, sweetheart, I'm not finished and I'd be much obliged if you stayed there – and so quick, so clever and then so tragically bereaved. You told me I wasn't human, princess. What about you? You put on your shows to get what you want; it's _always_ about what you want. If it means you have to look lost by the trashcan, or miserable at the bar, you'll do it. Because there will always be some sod who'll fall for those big pretty eyes. Sex, food, booze, whatever you want; you'll get it, princess." She would have bruises tomorrow. He didn't care. "I get what I want because I'm patient. And you – you get it because you have no shame. So don't you start trying to get me to act like you – I wouldn't stoop to it."

"All right then, what do I want? If you're so smart, you tell me _what do I want_?"

Khashoggi looked down at her and saw – himself, reflected over and over in green irises. He followed the line of vision out to the melting eyeliner, mascara that had not quite gone on smooth on her left eyelash. Out away from her remarkable eyes to the high, darkened brows that needed, here and there, a little shaping. The patch of dry skin on her cheek, the powder caught in the hairs on her forehead. A face. A face unlike any other, but then all faces were, by definition, unique. He returned his attention to her eyes, fixed on his. Again, the reflection of himself in unusually clear eyes. He remembered seeing her like this before, the two of them too close, her eyes too bright in a dirty, defiant face. He had known – as clearly as if she'd shouted it herself – that if he had touched her at that moment, she would have shattered beyond repair into green-gold glass. Not so now; now she was whole. And very angry. His lips curled. She wanted to know; let her have it. "Me," he said, delivering his words like a backhand. "You want me, and it's driving you out. Of. Your. Mind."

"I – " Meat said, then stopped. "You bastard. You rotten, fucking, perverted _pig_." She began to struggle again. "Let me go. In a minute, I'm going to scream and they're going to come running in and put you in that cage downstairs…_You let me go right now_!"

"It's true, though." It was usually an advantage to be tall. He rested his fingers against her lips. "It's true, and you're not going to scream. Because you want to know what happens next, just like I do." He smiled, faintly. "Remember, I know how you think, sweetheart."

"Like hell you do!"

"You're lying."

"Goddamn it, I am _not_ lying!" Meat tried to bite his fingers. "Get out of my head, get out of here, and fucking let go of me!" The tears came; not tears of misery but tears of pure frustration. "_I. Hate. You._ Oh, God, I hate you so much. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…" She stared at him, defiant and angry. "And I will hurt you as soon as I can. You don't belong here, I hate you…" And with an effort she yanked one arm free and slapped him. He reeled away, more surprised than anything else. Surprise turned to anger when she followed the slap with a gorgeous, solid roundhouse that made his jaw shake.

He caught her wrist. "Don't even _think_ about it!" And, for his trouble, was kicked in the kneecap. He fell, grabbing her waist as he did so. She pushed and kicked, forcing him to roll over and over on the floor, amidst CDs and dirty dishes. Something cracked and dug into his back and Khashoggi, angrier than he could ever remember being, fought back with everything he had. "Bitch princess," he gasped out, trying to get hold of her long enough to strangle her. "You asked for it…"

"I hate you," she gasped, slapping at his arms. "IhateyouIhateyouIhateyou…"

He finally stopped, breathless and flat on his back with Meat above him, dreds dangling around his face. "I hate you too, bitch princess," he muttered, and his hands, clenched around her lower arms, jerked and pulled her down. Her chin banged his collarbone. Caught up in something, uncharacteristically out of control, he loosed one hand and forced her chin up to kiss her, hard, because he had run out of other things to do to her. And because he had wanted to for so long.

"Oh, God, I hate you." She dug her hands into her shirt, twisting the fabric around her fingers until he felt the prick of nails against his chest. He dug one hand into her hair, kissing all the parts of her face he could reach and then trailing down the line of her neck. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, trying to slide it off and feel real skin and real warmth. His hands slid down her corset and they rolled over, crunching slightly on CD cases. "You power-mad villain," she gasped, sliding both hands under his shirt. Her lips brushed his neck, slid across his bare shoulder. Touch, simple touch, made him shiver.

"Unprincipled brat," he answered, catching her wrists and holding them to the side while he kissed her thoroughly. She tasted like sugar and sweat and slightly stale makeup: hedonism, five foot six, blonde, and dressed in outrageous clothes, was for the moment in his arms.

In the end, it was about control. It was always about control, had always been about control. Who had the emotional levers to pull or guilt-trips to loose; who was taller, who was shorter, who could exploit more weak points first. And Khashoggi, for the first time in his life, met something he could not control. He wanted to hurt her; she wanted to hurt him, and in the end they…created something else. Slick and body-close, he lost a life time's habit of manipulation, and discovered that the nature of what was between them, violence and generosity and cruelty and catharsis, made no allowances for masks or pretty games of petty sabotage. You were what you were. And in the end, what did they have? Hatred akin to attraction, pleasure akin to pain, and passion akin to passion.

**(A/N)** _Yes, the note is at the end this time, but if I'd put it at the beginning, it would have given the content away. Snicker. Essential premise, self-indulgent "V for Vendetta" references, and (most) characters not mine, though quite a lot of things are. And I guess at this point, I need to say that **Tekya Sugar Faerie** and **Jouliana** have been invaluable for this chapter, and many other parts of the story. I understand Meat and communal Boho lifestyle about as well as Khashoggi does, which is to say, in some respects fine and in others not at all (why I can't write from Meat's pov, and don't, here), and many times I've ended up going to their stories and reading to get a place to jump off, or just things to think about. In the end, this chapter has been well hard to write; I'm tired of it, and I can only hope it worked. I reserve full rights to rewrite if it didn't._


	8. Chapter 8

**(A/N)** _Oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my. Do I see inattentive readers? Dear me. I don't own any movie, book, or music quotes or references, and there are lots. Quotations make me way too happy. Also not mine is a mirror of **Werepuppy**'s "All These Things I Know" and, within that, the fact that Scara makes her own hair dye. This gem more properly belongs to **dolly.the.sheep**, who is amazingly good at explanations and backstory. And **Jouliana** (who isn't going to read this) deserves credit for suggesting a key fact that I desperately needed at the last minute. Yay forums! The Bohemians you don't recognize are, however, mine. I feel like Scara's characterization is a bit off, but I can't fix it. Grrr. Anyway, this one is dedicated to the people who thought seven was the last chapter._

---

_He was dreaming, and aware of it. An unusual sensation – as unusual as that of having a body beside of him, breathing and heartbeat surprisingly obvious. Out of a long habit of asking "why" and "how," he wondered why you were always tuned to the rhythm of your partner's breathing, and then decided that he didn't particularly care. It was enough that it was true._

_His dream was a white room extending in all directions he could see. Reason suggested there was a ceiling somewhere, but he couldn't really tell. The walls were covered in posters, new, old, and older, their colours bright but somehow soothing; the visual equivalent to a background hum. If the energy from Rock were to be real, he reflected, it might be something like this: a subdued murmur – electricity, a kind of magic – waiting to be plugged in and used… _

---

Two strangers turned up outside Liberty's, around ten in the evening. Meat Loaf opened the door. "Yeah?" she said, looking at the two people.

"Hi," said the woman. She had a Stateside accent and bleached hair alternating between red and white streaks. Her companion, a very tall man, loomed over her in a somewhat protective manner. "We need to talk to someone about texts."

"Can you be a bit more specific?" Meat looked impatient.

"We've found some really different ones; we thought you should, um, know about them. Is there anybody we can talk to about old stuff?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." She opened the door wider. "Come in." They both entered and stood, looking around in awe. "Pop!" Meat yelled.

The Librarian entered a few moments later, with Scaramouche clattering behind him. She tripped against the door lintel, cursed, and leaned over to do up the laces of her boots. "What?"

Meat waved a hand at the two Statesiders. "They got some old stuff," she said, then added, "Sorry, I gotta run."

"Quality fandango time indeed," muttered Scara. Then she stood and flicked her hair back, "Hey. What do you want?"

---

_"Aww…I think he's lost," said a voice that snickered a little. He turned. A young man with long blond hair was watching him, hands on hips, head cocked to the side. He looked amused, like Meat Loaf after someone had done something stupid._

---

"We've got some old texts," said the woman. "Um. Damn; I'm doing this all wrong." She stuck out a hand. "Hi, I'm Evita Sweeney, and this is Mozart. We're both from the New York region."

"Scaramouche," said Scara, shaking the other woman's hand.

"No shit, _really_? Wow." She smiled a little shyly. "I never thought I'd be meeting you in person."

"Well, you are," said Scara. She held out both hands and waggled the fingers. "Ta da! Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango." She dropped into one of the chairs, stretching boots out in front of her. "That's Pop, the Librarian."

"What's this about more texts?" said Pop. "We haven't been getting too many out of New York – have you found more?"

"Kind of." Evita pushed the hair out of her face and shuffled her fingers. "We've found music, but it isn't Rock. It's –"

"Older," broke in the man. He sounded excited, with a Galileo-like fanaticism. "Older and a lot richer. We've got some recordings; do you have equipment that can read this?" He held out a circular disc that caught the light.

"Oh, yeah," said Scara. "CDs are easy. Over there."

"Hey, you," Pop leaned over her. In an undertone he asked, "Where'd Meat have to run off to?"

Scara fought to keep a straight face. "Um, where do you _think_?" Pop was probably the only person who had to ask a question like that. "She's upstairs. I guess the good old fashioned lover boy fell asleep, which was why she could be arsed to come down in the first place." Scara took pity on Pop's confusion. "I think she's – uh – busy."

"Ri-i-i-ight," said Pop, who could at least tell there was something he didn't know. Over in the corner, Mozart put the CD into the machine and hit play. "Wow," he whispered, staring at the sound equipment that lined the room. "Vita, did you see? This is incredible!"

Then the music started. It wasn't Rock – that was pretty clear. Mozart was right: it was richer, and definitely more textured. It was as though someone had taken lots of instruments that, by themselves, weren't nearly as loud as a guitar and stuck them together to create something that was much bigger and louder. It started out with two chords, but not the bare emotion of guitar chords. Something far more blended; there were a lot of instruments here. It was building up to something, and then, there it was: a clear melody on an instrument both sweet and brassy. Scara and Pop stayed quite still for all fourteen minutes, listening to something completely new. Mozart hadn't changed the sound levels on the speakers, which had been cranked up, and so the music thundered through the building. Bohemians appeared at doors, drawn by new sound.

---

_"No, man, he's supposed to be here." The second man was a brunette, with a familiar solid air, despite being a good few inches shorter than Big Macca. _

_"But something's – not right." The blond seemed frustrated. "Something's gone funny out there, you know? Old music."_

_"Yeah, I hear it. But what about him, then…?"_

---

And then it ended. Mozart hit the button. "Well?"

"Wow," said Scara, blankly. "Do you have another one?"

The man grinned. "Sure, lady." This song started more slowly, then exploded into a massive run of chords punctuated by enormous percussion blasts. When that had finished he said, "That was what we call Bee-tho-ven and Te-say-kov-sky."

"Band names?"

"No – we think they're the composers. But it's kind of the same thing."

"That's some weird-ass Rock," groaned Big Macca, apparently woken up by the Tesaykovsky noise.

Mozart, Evita, Pop, and Scara turned to look at him and said in unison, "_It's not Rock_!" They all laughed.

"It's older than Rock," said Mozart patiently. "More passionate, more detailed, more intense…"

"There's not a lot of Rock from New York," said Evita, speaking over her enthusiastic companion. "But there's tons of other stuff; that confused us for a long time, actually. We've been trying to understand this for a while, but it looks like even before Planet Mall got really established, Rock had driven other kinds of music underground, like Beethoven and people who wrote like him. We have place called the Met that has millions of texts like Beethoven; some of them even have words."

"Not," said Mozart, with the sourness of someone opening an old argument, "that words are necessary for good music."

"Shut up," the girl answered cheerfully. "The point is that there's this stuff – referred to as 'Classical' in twentieth-century records – and then there's also something else, which they call 'Broadway' instead of Rock. That's what we wanted you to hear."

"Well, only sort of," said Mozart.

"I said, shut up."

"You shut up. Both are important for our understanding of music in a general sense…"

"Blah, blah, blah." Evita tossed her hair back. A few watchers giggled at familiar bickering. Scara glared impotently. "Here, listen. This is a Broadway song, and I thought it was interesting. There are lots of other ones, but maybe this one first. We can't transcribe it but we were hoping there was someone here who could reconstruct it." She hit play.

_Someday, somewhere_

_We'll find a new way of living_

_Will find a way of forgiving_

_Somewhere..._

_There's a place for us_

_Somewhere a place for us_

_Peace and quiet and open air_

_Wait for us_

_Somewhere _

They listened. They heard another sort of music, another way to express; something between the totally unfamiliar of Classical and what they knew of Rock. They heard new possibilities in their beloved music, and even if they didn't like it, it was unfamiliar and tantalizing.

---

_"You're both wrong." Another brunette, with a fluffy wealth of curls around a sharp face. He had Scaramouche's arch look of teasing criticism. Or maybe she had his. Or maybe…maybe he only saw it because he wanted to. He looked at the blond again and realized he had nothing whatsoever in common with Meat. It was only that fleeting similarity that you saw sometimes in dreams when you were convinced that one person was another despite a complete lack of resemblance. "They want him over there," said the third man, jerking a thumb to one side._

---

"Brilliant," said Pop. "Absolutely brilliant."

"Hey," said someone, "isn't that Live Forever?"

"Not quite," said Mozart pedantically. "This one came first, I think. The records suggest it was very important."

"I like it." Pop said. "And I'd love to hear whatever else you've got, just to make sure our records are straight too."

"Yeah. Um, know what, stay as long as you want," added Scara. "We'll get this sorted."

Evita and Mozart were mobbed by enthusiastic Bohemians then. They played clips, answered questions, got to know the inhabitants of Liberty's. Scara slipped away, tired and annoyed. _Live Forever – the absolute last thing I need right now!_ She went to the studio, hoping to find a little peace and found, instead, Moxy Fruvous and Froggie, adjusting the legs of a sleek black baby-grand piano. "What is _that_?" she demanded.

"Scaramouche!" Froggie waved enthusiastically. "Guess what? We found this piano where we were in Guildford and we just liked it so much that we thought we'd better bring it back, because it's awesome and in really really good condition, especially considering it was in a gunfight and everything, and –"

"Froggie wanted it," said Moxy with a self-deprecating shrug. "Seemed to think it was important enough to go back for."

"Looks nice," said Scara. "Because a new piano is ex_act_ly what we need, isn't it?" Froggie had the grace to look embarrassed. "Look, mates, this is _my_ studio, not yours, so get your sweet little arses out of here before I kick them, yeah." She gave them both a glare that no one – possibly not even Galileo – could have withstood.

Moxy wasn't stupid. He looked at his companion and said, "Hey, Frog, let's go see what's making all that noise downstairs. Sounds pretty cool."

---

_He looked in the direction indicated, and it was as though a window had been removed from the whiteness and there was, instead of white walls and posters, patchy darkness, full of swimming shapes he couldn't quite make out. He walked towards it, and the fourth figure lounging near the break in the wall, arms crossed. _

"_Who said my party was all over, I'm in pretty good shape, The best years of my life are like a supernova…then we took a holiday on Khashoggi's ship," said the last man, grinning with a flash of prominent front teeth._

"_I beg your pardon?" That didn't seem like quite the right response. He blinked. "What?"_

---

Upstairs, Andrei Khashoggi turned in his sleep and then, dragged back to consciousness by a thrumming bass, sat up. No rest for the wicked indeed. He looked at the clock and wondered, faintly exasperated, what he'd been doing napping at this time of night. Shrugging his jacket over his shoulders, he went downstairs to investigate. And perhaps…where was she, anyway?

Khashoggi went down one staircase. Moxy Fruvous and Foggie went down another. Scara sat on one of the stools in the studio and stretched legs out in front of her. She began to play; wide chords that rippled like the waters of lake Geneva.

Moxy pushed into the crowd and nodded at Khashoggi. Eventually the young man reached nearly the centre, drawn by an exuberant three-four. Like everybody else, he wanted to see what the new sound was about. He collided with Bob's shoulder and, peering around the bigger man, said blankly, "Holy shit."

"…yeah, you should meet him. He's from Stateside too," someone was saying. "There he is, the sneaky bugger. Hey, Moxy, over here." Madonna waved, beckoning him to the man, and the woman with streaked hair. She pushed it away from her face with that familiar, neat gesture. And…Moxy was looking at his own face. They'd joked about it, when they were much younger, saying that they didn't need a mirror. They'd dressed up as each other at Halloween once; they'd tricked people. It had been like having another self, until one day he realized that there was a Becky that wasn't the other half of Pete. There was a Becky that had nothing to do with Pete. And that had hurt. But then, so had seeing Becky – whichever one it was – in Gardener's grasp. Peter Sandley jammed both hands into Bob's back and pushed past him. "Becky?" he said, suddenly out of breath.

She put both her hands over her mouth in shock, the way she'd always done. "Ohmigod." She took a few steps forward and stopped, abruptly. "Pete?" He nodded.

"Dear Lord. How – How the _hell_? You're a _Bohemian_?"

"Wait, wait, wait." Big Macca was looking from one to the other. "Are you two related or something?"

"Yeah," Bowie said, disdainfully. "Can't you tell?"

"I – " Moxy grabbed his sister and hugged her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I was looking for you, and I found Linkin instead, and…You need to tell me what happened to _you_!"

"You say it like it was a good thing," said Evita. But she smiled at him anyway, and held him back to look at the paint-spattered jeans and denim jacket and green hair. "My normal, policeman brother is a Boho. Which is just bizarre on so many levels."

He sobered. "Sorry. But I'm so – happy. God. I was so worried about you."

"Likewise." She hugged him again. "Mmm…"

---

_"Sounds like they want you back, love." He was short and carrying perhaps a little more weight than he should. His hair – also dark – was cut short, but under the moustache, he had a lovely bone-structure. "Pity." He shrugged. "We'd have liked to keep you. Maybe another time?"_

_"Um, sure." And then he walked towards the shadows and then…_

_and then…_

---

…and then he was awake, and aware of it, and a silky voice was talking. "I can't explain it; I suppose it's those frozen moments: the look on her face when she smiles, mercurial and giddy, with that dimple on the right side of her mouth and that spark of mischief. The weight of her as she leans across me to grab something. The sound of her voice as she says the most normal of things: 'Morning,' or 'What do you want now?'." The rustle of a man standing up. "At any rate, it doesn't matter. I can't imagine you care." Walking, movement.

He summoned an effort. It was like running onstage at a concert: you knew you had a job to do and you knew it was going to be hard, but it had to be done…he opened his eyes. "Well," he managed, with infinite fatigue and amusement, "it's about time." The whisper slid down the bed and across the floor, lapped at Khashoggi's ankles, and arrested him by the door. The Commander turned and walked back, cool and collected as ever. Only the tremor in his voice gave him away. "Excuse me. What did you say?"

The boy on the bed moved his head, just a little. "What the _fuck_?" Galileo said in a less eldritch way. He looked up at Khashoggi and his lips curled in the faintest of grins. "Of all the things – I expected to hear," he paused, took another breath, "Commander Khashoggi being – philosophical was not – one of them."

"It's about time _what_?" pressed Khashoggi.

He caught a glimpse of the boy's teeth. "What d'you think? Moet and Chandon; Khashoggi's ship; you and Meat. Duh."

Khashoggi's face was, Galileo thought, well worth coming back to life for. A mixture of frustration, embarrassment, and sneaking content that was entirely, completely out of character. "Fine," said the nettled Commander. "That's it. I'm waking her."

"What?" Galileo turned his head a little.

Scaramouche herself had fallen asleep in her chair, holding onto the Sacred Axe. The commander touched Scaramouche's shoulder. Her face was part silver, and her hair was a godawful mess. She woke with a start, snarled, "What the hell do _you_ want?" and Galileo fell in love all over again.

Khashoggi said something, and she turned her head, with the unconscious grace she showed, sometimes, to look directly at Galileo. Khashoggi caught the guitar as it fell and held onto the chair when she launched herself at the bed. She couldn't speak; too many things, too many contradictory emotions were welling up and sticking in her throat, and she could only squeak out, "_Gazz_!" past the block. Then, because she didn't know what else to do, she burst into tears.

Galileo pushed one of his hands into her hair. "Scara-skirmisher," he murmured. "You're crying. You _never_ cry."

She looked up at him, her face glimmering in the half light. "I do too."

He smiled. "You do too." He touched her cheek, pushing the tears away, a little surprised that he was allowed to be so comforting. "You're beautiful."

"Am not." She buried her face in his pillow, then lifted it again. "I'm pasty and puffy and blotchy and slobbery and," she paused for breath, "I'm _definitely_ not beautiful."

"Yes you are." He traced the lines of her face with his thumb. "Touch my tears with your lips, touch my voice with your fingertips."

"Gazz…" she scrubbed at her eyes, and then touched his face. "_Are_ we gonna have forever?"

"Looks like it." He kissed her fingers as they went by. "Ours today, right."

"Yeah."

"Dreamer." Khashoggi's voice caught Galileo and pulled him back to the room. "Welcome back." The tall man nodded, the gesture anachronistic and courtly.

"Um, thanks?" said Galileo, embarrassed.

"Half an hour?" Commander Khashoggi lifted an eyebrow.

"Yeah, that should do it." Galileo and the Commander understood each other well. He nodded again, left the room. And then it was Galileo Figaro and Scaramouche facing each other on a hospital bed.

"Hey, Gaga girl," he said, quietly. "Uh – So, what's been going on, exactly?"

"I don't answer questions," said Scara and sniffed, grinning. "S'a stupid question too, Gazz. _They'll_ tell you that." She rolled her eyes. "Short version? Some bastard got by the Commander and Moxy at the concert and shot you. And then you died, and then you came back to life again, and then they forgot about you for a bit whilst Khashoggi and that lot went and shot Yes-Things. And now you're alive again."

"Uh, all right. That was kinda short." She giggled, and propped her chin in her hands. "So, what were you going to tell me?"

"Huh?"

"Oh, the night before the concert, you, uh, you said you wanted to tell me something."

"_Oh_."

"Yeah…?" She was intimidated by silence, he knew. It wasn't fair, but sometimes you had to cheat a little. And there was definitely something she wasn't telling him. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She was a good liar, and the fact that he knew her well enough to see through her equivocations surprised him faintly.

They stared at each other for a few silent moments, then Scara dropped her face against the sheets and said, her voice a little muffled, "It's not _fair_."

"What isn't?"

"I said it already; I don't wanna say it again."

"Scara? What?" She mumbled something that he couldn't hear. Galileo transferred his gaze to the ceiling. "You do realize I'll find out, don't you? I know everything about you."

"Yeah?" A muffled challenge, but a challenge all the same.

"Sure. I know you hate people trying to define you because you don't trust names. I know that you need hugs sometimes. I know…" he prodded a sleepy memory into action. "I know that you don't really like Guinness – you just drink it 'cause you think its macho. I know that you make your own hair dye. I know that you know that I like the tarty underwear Madonna gave you for Christmas. Hell, I know that _you_ like the tarty underwear Madonna gave you for Christmas." There were an indistinct sound of annoyance. "I know that you're still scared of Khashoggi, and I know that he knows it too. I know that sometimes you're nice. And," he tugged a tangle of hair, "I know that what you know, I eventually find out."

She pulled her face out of the sheets. "Everything?" She took a deep breath. "Damn you and your perceptiveness, Galileo sodding Figaro." She spread her hands out and placed them palm-down on the bed. "Um. We're, or actually, _I'm_ going to, uh," her face squinched up, "have a baby." She was looking at her hands, speaking very quickly. "I didn't want to tell you, and I didn't want to deal with it, and I'm really sorry, 'cause for some reason it's my fault – _I_ don't know why – and Meat said I needed to tell you 'cause you're soppy, but I reckon I needed to tell you eventually before I get really fat, and I mean, this is only if you want to. And, of course, if you don't decide to bugger off with an ex-Gaga girl. And if you don't –"

"Scara." She looked up, eyes big. "You're serious, right? You're not taking the mick?"

"Oh, for – Yes, of _course_ I'm serious, Gazz. D'you think I'd be joking about _this_?"

"You're sure?"

"_Yes_." The glare this time was mostly embarrassment. "I _can_ count, you know."

"Only to four."

"That's enough."

"Is it?"

"_Yes_." Scara wound the sheet around her fingers and caught his eyes. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, what are you going to do? Say _something_! Don't just lapse into unconsciousness again!"

"You're sure?"

"_This is very embarrassing_. How many times do I have to say this?"

"OK. I just want to –" Galileo sighed. "I believe it and I don't. I mean, we're going to have a _kid_. Like, a little me. Or a little you, oh my God. It's…bizarre, you know?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Terror of knowing what this world is about and stuff. Um, Gazz? You're not going to – leave, or anything?"

"I – what?" He smiled, awkwardly. "I can't get on without you – you know that. _Everybody_ knows that; it's like the biggest joke here. Why the hell would I leave? You're stuck with me." He paused. "Are you, uh, all right?"

Scara wrinkled her nose. "Course I am. What, do I look like I'm gonna pass out or something?" She twisted the sheet around her fingers. "I dunno; it makes me feel weird to be like this. _Responsible_. It's not just me anymore, you know."

"It was never just you." Galileo unwound the sheets from her fingers and squeezed them. "Not since you woke up in the hospital and glared at me." Her mouth twitched. "You and your winning ways."

She got up and burrowed into the bed next to him. She twisted their hands together, one set short and stubby with guitar callouses, the other long and knobbly, tucking them under his chin. "I know."

"I know you know."

---

Khashoggi slipped into one of the many rooms and over to an armchair where Meat sat sprawled, watching Big Macca and Bob and Froggie play a video game. He put a hand on her shoulder and he felt her shiver, just a little. She turned her face up, lips parted. _Get a grip, mate_. "Yeah?"

"I need you and Paul."

"What, I'm not good enough by myself?" She giggled, then swung out of the chair and poked Big Macca in the shoulder. "Oi, you. You're being taken into police custody." Khashoggi winced. Well, if she could joke about it…

"Yeah?" Big Macca eyed the Commander warily.

"Would you come to the hospital?" He lead the way down the corridors. The room was the same as it had been when he'd left it, though there were now two bodies on the bed and the sound of whispering. He cleared his throat, but didn't turn on the lights. That would be wrong, somehow.

Scara sat up. "Sod off for another hour, can't you?"

Galileo laughed, weakly. "Shut it," he said.

"Oh, so now I have to wait for you to talk to your fan club?"

"They're not my fan club, they're the _Band_!"

"Whatever."

"Holy fucking _shit_," said Big Macca, and skidded across the room. "Man, I'm gonna kill you myself. Don't you _ever_ do that again, y'hear?" He poked Galileo as if afraid something wasn't true. "I don't believe this is happening."

Meat looked up at Khashoggi and her fingers closed tight around his for a moment. Then she walked after the bassist to the bed. "Dreamer. What's chillin'?" She leaned forward and kissed him.

"Heya, Miss Loaf." He grinned at her. "Hear you've been having a good time. Oh yeah, and I've got a new song for you. It's gonna rock." He looked around at his band. "S'called Khashoggi's Ship. You think we can handle it?"

"Gazz!" Scara pushed him, a little more gently than she might have normally. "Go easy – he hasn't got a sense of humour."

"What?" Big Macca looked confused.

"_I_ can handle it," said Meat, and sent a grin over toward the lurking Khashoggi.

"Christ," muttered Khashoggi. He came to stand by the bed and looked down at Galileo. "That's really not necessary."

"Well, I didn't say that was the _only_ thing we'd be working on."

---

"A bottle of Perrier, one pint Guinness, a WKD Blue, whiskey – straight, and a double vodka and coke. And," he bowed to an inevitability, "what have you got for champagne?"

The pub was a little too smoky, a little too loud. He threaded his way through the groups at the tables and the eddies in the conversations. Out at the back, through a glass door, was an old-fashioned flagstone yard with tables. Someone had lined the fence with mirrors that tossed back reflections all around them. There were fairy-lights strung through the trees as well, their points of brilliance doing funny things to the reflections. It was a world that wasn't quite real; a magical somewhere-else where movements were languid and even the air seemed sweet.

Heartbreak Bohemians and guests were draped over the yard in chairs and on the ground, a few of them dancing in the cleared centre. Cheeky Fairy was in one of the trees, her legs dangling head height. Bowie, smoking, leaned against the tree watching people. There were people singing, but with the lights and mirrors, it wasn't clear who. "_On such a breathless night as this, upon my brow the lightest kiss, I walked alone._" Moxy Fruvous was dancing with one of the younger girls, spinning her and laughing. Evita sat on Big Macca's table, talking to Paul and Madonna and Bob. Mozart and Pop were in one corner and it was unclear who was talking more. At the back of the yard was a larger point of brilliance which resolved itself eventually into a blonde girl standing on a table, dancing very slowly and with an apparent lack of self-consciousness. "_The White Queen walks and the night grows pale, stars of lovingness in her hair._" The voices trailed away and the guitar music spun up to the sky in a fragile spiral of nearly tangible light. Khashoggi stopped to watch the dancer and player. The Band preferred the later music, silly and energetic. But, under duress, Khashoggi would have admitted that he liked Queen's early music with its absurd romanticism and soft fantastical ideas.

Closer, the image wavered. "Oi, you, get off the table," said Scara, placing her guitar on the ground under the tree. Galileo, leaning against the table and watching Scaramouche, held out a hand and Meat jumped to the ground. She pranced up to Khashoggi and took possession of the vodka and coke. Her lips, sugar-salt from the bar peanuts, brushed his. "Mine, I think." Behind them, the music changed. "_My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender. Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way. The history book on the shelf. Is always repeating itself_." Madonna grabbed Aretha and started a conga line.

"Indeed." The Commander placed the other drinks on the table and seated himself.

"Champagne?" said Scara. "Posh."

"Very." Meat grinned. "At any time, an invitation you can't decline."

"He's well-bred in etiquette," suggested Scara.

"Everything's all right, just hold on tight, because he's a good old-fashioned lover boy."

"Nice joke, Gazz." Scara slapped him. "_Real_ creative."

"Thank you."

She smirked. "I wasn't bein' _ser_ious."

"Stop saying that!"

Khashoggi poured four glasses of the golden wine and handed them round. Scara sighed and muttered something.

"What?" Meat looked at Galileo. "I didn't catch that."

He sighed. "She said, no thanks."

"Oh?" Meat's eyebrows shot up. "Oh."

"_Oh_." Khashoggi pushed the Perrier across the table.

"Oh." Scara's glare warned against further comment. "None of your damn business, right?"

---

There had been reprisals, there had been thanks. There had been frustration and passion and a certain easing of a certain kind of tension, though how long _that_ would last was entirely unclear. There had been revelations; miracles, even. There were new faces, new possibilities. Things shifted, moved, fell back into their patterns again.

Of course there's a future. Of course things will change again, drastically. Of course more happens. But Scara is adamant: it's none of your damn business. If you want to imagine a future, think of a group of people locked together by shared affection and passion and experience. Think of a band of four wild, pretty young men. Think of a band of two rockin' dudes and two crazy chicks. Think of fights and makeup sex; think of things getting thrown and things being drawn on walls. Think of music and madness and rock glamour scattered like dust over London. But most of all, think of four people drinking champagne in a twilight garden and an idea, a dream, that will live forever.

Although, really, that doesn't matter so much: after all, forever is their today.

---

_End_


End file.
